


doom daze (fear of the water)

by Klavier



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Bodyswap, Explicit Sexual Content, Hair Dyeing As Intimacy, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Natural Disasters, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:29:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28898946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klavier/pseuds/Klavier
Summary: “Once upon a time,” Soonyoung says, voice syrupy. “There was a boy who lived on the east side of Seoul National and a boy who lived on the west side…”Minghao’s head whips towards him. “Seriously?”“Shhh.” Soonyoung flaps a hand at his face. “There were two boys. One was like a hurricane and one was like a wildfire. No, one was like a spider and one was like a bird. Wait, shit, no. I want to be a tiger. Scratch all that, we’re starting over.”
Relationships: Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi/Xu Ming Hao | The8
Comments: 40
Kudos: 83





	doom daze (fear of the water)

**Author's Note:**

> Title a stitching together of Bastille’s Doom Days and SYML’s Fear of the Water. Inspired, very loosely, by Amitav Ghosh's The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable.
> 
> This is a little unhinged hahahah so I'd just like to say—Every experience with PTSD is different, and this is not meant to be a realistic guide on what PTSD is or how to approach recovery. This is a specific exploration of fictional characters in a fictional scenario. Although the story touches on heavy topics, I like to think they’re handled gently. Please still heed the rating and tags.
> 
> \+ Adding additional content warning just in case: there is an element of one scene that may be considered dubcon. Check the end note for a full explanation or feel free to message me for more info if you’re unsure!
> 
> Special thank you to naty and c for the early readthroughs and reassurances!! <3

“we should live  
with eyes of longing,  
and stand as one good life  
indebted to this earth.”  
— Sumjin River part 5, Kim Yong-taek  
(trans. Chae-Pyong Song and Anne Rashid)

“The most beautiful part of your body  
is where it’s headed.”  
—Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong, Ocean Vuong

In Sydney, a few weeks before the fire, Soonyoung makes an impulse buy at the university bookstore.

He’s standing in the center of the fiction maze, one hand gliding over glossy spines, looking for a farewell gift for Lee Chan who is moving back to Jeonbuk. Chan likes gritty unrealism. _Anything dark,_ he’d said. _Get me Ted Chiang stories. I’m sick of reading about dead old white men._

_That’s what happens when you write a thesis on terrorism in Western Europe,_ Soonyoung had said with glee.

Now Soonyoung huffs a frustrated sigh and disturbs the dust particles on the C shelf. No sci-fi short story collections here. But his eyes catch on a murder-red rectangle in the corner. _Love Stories and Other Ways the World Goes Round._ A neon yellow USED sticker hangs off the bottom edge.

The ridiculous title amuses Soonyoung enough that he picks it up. It’s an anthology of the world’s greatest love stories, unironically beginning with a shortened retelling of Romeo and Juliet. He almost puts it down before noticing notations in the margins. Dark, sloppy characters fill the empty space on almost every page.

He flips to a random spot in the middle. Where the story reads _That fateful night, Narcissus slept by the pond, his hair enframed in moss and flowering lilies,_ the notation is scratched, _when even self-obsessed dickwads have better luck with Switching than I do._

Who would bother annotating this? More importantly, why would the university think it’s still worth $10 after such desecration?

Ten minutes later the door swings shut behind Soonyoung, the book and its receipt cradled in his bag. He reads the first half that day, tucked under his desk at work in the bursar’s office, cackling into his sleeve at comments which scathingly rip apart the concept of Switching and so-called soulmates.

But. A few of the notes reveal a breathless aching for an unnamed lover. Those are so raw Soonyoung’s eyes naturally skip over them, then return. Skip. Reread. He feels like a voyeur. Loves it. He presses a bitten-down thumbnail to the note at the end of the story about Achilles and Patroclus.

_Maybe you were right. I try not to think like that, but the end is so lonely without you._

Soonyoung doesn’t want to know what _the end_ refers to.

In Seoul, three months after the fire, Soonyoung moves his measly bag of possessions out of Wonwoo’s shabby apartment and into an equally decrepit apartment forty minutes away.

Day two and he’s exhausted after dragging the mattress upstairs. Soonyoung feels like a wilted plant. He foregoes a shower and flops onto bare sheets in his outside clothes.

He has enough forethought to shimmy out of his jeans and turn his face toward the window, seeking future sunlight so he doesn’t oversleep, and then he passes the fuck out. Like a sack of rice hitting the ground.

A nightmare awaits, a trapdoor spider in the shadows of his subconscious.

_Soonyoung is standing in the familiar geography of his apartment back in Sydney. Through the window, the sky is blood, orange, piss, fire, w̷̬͗͒r̴̤̀̿͑̎͝o̷̮̣͓̳̼̾̾n̵̬̿͝g̶̟̹͙̃̋͋̑̚. Under his bed there is a library. This is something he knows without looking, an accepted fact of the dream, just like he knows the first floor of the building is on fire._

_He opens the window. An intimate smoke burn greets the back of his throat. Down below, the street is a chlorinated pool. Soonyoung waves and yells, calls for help, but the people swimming below don’t hear him. He’s a̵̦͌l̵̫̗̜̪͂̆o̵̧̜͈̼̒ͅn̷̙͚͆̑͑̈́͠e̴̩̓̉͘_

_Soonyoung takes both fists to his bedroom walls for no reason other than because he can, because he feels nothing but dream-passivity. His hands become engorged. They swell like meat balloons as he rages against the furniture._

_Nonsense falls from the shelves. Old photographs, band posters for Tonight Alive and SHINee and 5 Seconds of Summer, a stash of matcha Pepero sticks he hid in the closet, a potted snake plant, an orange hat with tiger stripes..._

_The scene changes._

_His bedroom door opens to a tiny trickle of fire, a handshake of flame. Soonyoung freezes. He falls under a helpless, detached hypnosis. He can’t help floating closer, his vision a fisheye lens. The door slams in his face with the fire on this side._

_Soonyoung has enough lucidity to scream once._

_P̷͎̲͍̞̦̈́͐́̇͝l̸̰̳̫̻̰̾̒͌͌̕ẽ̵̤̖̜̣̝̐a̵̜̘̜͍̫͋̽͂̒s̷̢̙͓͈̩̅̐̂̽e̷̦̥̾͛ ̵̠̜͎̑̓ṉ̷͋͑͂͆o̶̙̥̯̲͗̐̔͌t̶̺̬̎͘͘ ̸̳̮̜̮̪̃̽̏̋ą̶̧̛̿͑̊͘͜g̵̯͘a̸̤̳͎̟͌̾̂̊ǐ̵̻̮͕̻̠̌̒͐͠n̶̟͊̑͂̎̕.̶͔͎̳͉̪̇̌͌̽—_

_He screams as his body boomerangs back and hangs out the window, eyes gushing with smoke-tears, propelled by a gust of wind like a giant is sighing through the crack underneath the door. When he tips sideways and plummets toward the pool, he is silent._

Soonyoung wakes up. His whole body is tense and curved into a protective knot. He’s shaking, freezing cold, and out of breath. Unfamiliar surroundings kick his heart rate into overdrive. He rockets upward and scrambles for his phone, but—dead battery. Sick.

Oh. This is his new apartment. Bare bed, singular nightstand, one pan on the kitchen counter. Golden streetlight floods through the back window and illuminates grotesque shadows on the front door, stark like blue paint over the wood.

Just a nightmare. More memory than dream this time, though.

Soonyoung rolls over and deliberately flattens himself to the mattress, like he learned to do on Wonwoo’s couch. Sucking in deep breaths, he focuses on relaxing one muscle at a time. Thank fuck he isn’t a screamer. The neighbors would be filing complaints already.

He thinks firmly, _I am safe here._

Soonyoung stopped believing in things like safety and permanence when he lost his apartment.

He’s lucky, the firefighters said. He could’ve lost his life. Soonyoung sat on the kerb and looked up at the carcass of his building, an orange and black haze. The air was soupy and red as chili flakes. Air scraped against his throat, sandpaper on spiderweb. He didn’t feel lucky.

He called Chan.

“Sorry it’s early.” Soonyoung’s voice croaked and ached and died right there on the phone. “Can you pick me up from the hospital?”

“Hyung.” There was a burst of static, followed by a groan. “That’s not funny.”

“Channie, I’m really here. My building’s gone. I slept through the evacuation notice.”

“For the—oh, what the hell. What the hell. I see your texts. Are you okay? Which hospital?”

The words drifted around Soonyoung’s head like plumes of smoke. What the hell was right.

It’s a common misconception, that hell is beneath our feet. Soonyoung remembers thinking that hell must be at eye level. He looked at the fire and the fire looked back. Between them, recognition.

Eventually Soonyoung falls back to sleep in his swanky new apartment in his swanky new life. This time he doesn’t dream. The very instant that he begins to wake, he knows he’s Switched.

Breathing feels different. It starts deeper in his belly, lasts longer. Soonyoung’s teeth feel blunter against his tongue, crooked in unfamiliar places, and his hair is softer against his cheek. His hips, skinnier when he shifts his weight. His legs are longer and thinner.

Soonyoung’s heart starts to pound. Where is he? _Who_ is he? He’s terrified to open his eyes, can only press his palms flat to the sheet underneath him and try to reorient himself one sense at a time. Why now?

First, touch. He flexes a hand. Long-fingered and smooth. He touches his hair—long in the back, shaggy-short in the front. Soft as silk. Smells faintly like sandalwood.

He lays another hand flat on his bare stomach, which concaves gently below his ribcage. The muscles are strong. When Soonyoung breathes, he can feel their flex and release, can imagine the energy stored in this body radiating outwards like bioluminescence. This person feels like an athlete.

He twitches a hand toward his groin and stops. Well, there’s a dick between his legs. Nothing new. That’s both relieving and disappointing.

Soonyoung opens his eyes.

He’s looking at a white popcorn ceiling. The bedroom is small and minimalistic—a neat desk in the eastern window, an open closet crammed with a glowing rainbow of clothes. There’s an unlit incense holder and a neat stack of books on the desk. It’s quaint.

When he sits up, Soonyoung thinks he might puke. Fuck. Vertigo spins his universe like a basketball. He screws his eyes shut and draws a shuddering breath, feeling the foreign movement of these shoulders, thinner than his own. This is like the virtual reality bar he tried once with Wonwoo, years ago, when the headset made him so dizzy he couldn’t shoot straight and accidentally squished his face into a pancake against the wall.

It takes a long minute before Soonyoung can swing his legs off the side of the bed.

He was right—this body is lean and muscular. All ten of his toes wiggle on command. The reality of the situation almost knocks him sideways. He’s Switched! He’s in someone else’s body! These are really someone else’s feet!

Soonyoung raises both hands to his face. Heart line, different. Life line, different. The backs of his hands are smooth as milk. An involuntary, shocked little wheeze escapes his throat. The noise is softer than he expects. Higher.

Soonyoung stands up, up, up... and he’s tall.

Fuck yeah!

He crosses the room to the desk. Muscle memory kicks in. He feels better in movement, less overwhelmed. The books on the desk are Korean medical textbooks, one self-help book tucked amongst the rest. Notations are pressed firmly into the margins—Chinese. Interesting!

Soonyoung glances around for a mirror and doesn’t see one. Sheer curtains send a muted, glowing light over the space. He peers out the window to see a standard block of apartment buildings like a row of gray shoeboxes. No street signs or license plates are visible. Is this Korea? China?

Someplace else entirely?

Soonyoung flexes his beautiful hands. He feels... _good._ Weightless. Excited.

With confidence, he throws open the bedroom door to the apartment’s main space.

Success! There’s a man in the kitchen! His back is towards Soonyoung, but he’s tall and has graceful little ankles that tap and shimmy his feet while he stirs a pot on the stove. On the couch, a laptop plays the morning news broadcast about a freak tornado in New Delhi.

At the sound of the door, the man turns over one shoulder and says something to Soonyoung in Chinese.

Shit. Okay. He can introduce himself in Chinese, right? Adrenaline feels different in this body, a whizz instead of a jolt, and Soonyoung wets his lips in preparation. They’re chapped, a little bitten.

“Wŏ...” Soonyoung begins, one hand proud on his chest. “Wŏ ài nĭ Soonyoung.”

I am Soonyoung. He smiles.

The man drops his bamboo ladle and turns fully around. His face is delicate like a doll’s and very pretty; Soonyoung’s stomach swoops into the underworld.

The man says something low and fast, cutting himself off with a giggle. Did he get the message? He’s scrutinizing Soonyoung, but not in the nice-to-meet-you way, in the are-you-clinically-insane way. Maybe Soonyoung fucked up. He’s been known to do so.

Soonyoung tries again. He pounds a palm on his chest like knocking on a door. “Nĭ hăo,” he says. “Wŏ ài…”

This time he doesn’t finish before the man gets it.

With a surprised _oh,_ the man reaches back to turn off the stove. A huge smile erupts over his face as he closes the distance between them, one hand hovering near Soonyoung’s shoulder. Warmth radiates from him like light.

In stuttering English, the man says, “You are… soulmate?”

Soonyoung nods emphatically. English! He can do that one! “We Switched,” he says slowly. He doesn’t know which questions to ask first. “Where am I? Who am I?”

“My name is Junhui. This is Seoul.”

Soonyoung almost passes out. He switches languages so fast his tongue trips over the fricatives. “Holy shit, I’m still in Seoul? Do you speak Korean?”

Junhui lights up. “Yes! Good, good, I’m shit at English. What’s your name?”

“I’m Soonyoung. Where in Seoul…?”

His eyes flick to the window. Same view of the street, the monochrome apartment windows, low-hanging branches brushing the windowpane like a row of green fangs. Nothing immediately familiar.

Junhui laughs. “Is that what you meant to say—okay. Nice to meet you, Soonyoung! This is Sillim-dong. You’re in my best friend’s body, his name is Minghao.”

Soonyoung gets directions to the bathroom and locks himself inside. The tile floor is a frozen tundra against his feet. He tests out the name, Minghao, and it feels smooth as cream on his tongue. He braces both hands on the sink before gathering the courage to look in the mirror.

His face!

A face. Shaggy black hair, button nose, a more refined bone structure than he imagined. Moderately curious eyebrows. Full lips like petals, pink and plush. He’s pretty. Soonyoung expected—average. Mundane. This face is appealing.

Even worse, Soonyoung realizes that he needs to pee. Fuck! He’s going to touch the dick of a pretty stranger, which is technically his dick right now. How did Wonwoo get through this during his Switch?

Ew. No. He can’t think of Wonwoo while he’s pulling down his shorts. Soonyoung does his business and doesn’t look. He stares at a discolored crack on the ceiling for a long time.

Then he looks. Sue him, he’s curious.

Minghao’s dick curves leftward. A little skinnier than Soonyoung’s own, but not too foreign. He touches it experimentally. No, no, he can’t...

Soonyoung strips naked and spins in front of the mirror, poking and prodding at his new body, learning its hills and valleys and forests. So different from his own.

There’s a long, ugly scar at the small of Minghao’s back like the tendril of a pink-and-white fern.

When he touches it, the skin tingles. A psychosomatic pain. How fascinating! Soonyoung wonders what his own scarred hands are doing right now, under someone else’s tutelage, someone who doesn’t know their aches and limitations.

What if he accidentally stabs himself in this body? What if Soonyoung trips down the stairs and returns these legs in a dozen shards?

Oh god. This is more complicated than he imagined.

When Jeonghan Switched, he was the first among their group. It was a huge affair. The girl he Switched with lived in Mozambique with her longterm girlfriend. Neither were happy to drop a month’s wages on plane tickets to Switch back. They could afford it, because the Switch always seemed to know exactly how far it could stretch, but the monetary loss hit hard.

It was a stark reminder of the Switch’s failings. How sometimes it acted as a social stratifier rather than an equalizer.

But Jeonghan had returned—in his own body—sparkling and tan and utterly besotted.

“We’re already best friends,” he’d said. “We’ll probably never see each other again, because that flight sucked, but I’m glad that I met her.”

He never spoke of the deep, swooping terror that’s currently turning Soonyoung’s organs to ice. Responsibility hangs over his head like the sword of fucking Damocles. Soonyoung redresses quickly and brushes his teeth with a finger because he doesn’t know which toothbrush is Minghao’s. A splash of water smooths his hair down.

He can’t even think about bathing.

When he emerges from the bathroom, Junhui is doling out bowls of steaming red stew. He’s arranged the table to seat two and he’s humming a light-hearted little tune. Soonyoung looks over at the neat bookshelf, the matching lamps, the notebook on the couch open to a diagram of the human respiratory system. This is a far cry from his crusty, brand-new apartment.

“How are you doing?” Junhui asks gently. “His phone should be on the desk somewhere, if you want to make a call.”

“Yeah, okay!” Soonyoung shuffles awkwardly back into the bedroom. “I’ll just do that.”

Right. Phone. Getting into contact with his own body. He focuses on the desk. Carefully he moves aside notes and pamphlets until he sees the phone, strategically placed in a hollow between two books, as if Minghao was deliberately not using it before bed. The model is as unfamiliar as an alien spacecraft.

The screen lights up when he taps it, though. Soonyoung unlocks it with his thumbprint. Shit. Everything’s in Chinese. Red notifications catch his eye on every page. With his limited knowledge of characters and a bit of common sense, Soonyoung navigates to the call screen and types his own number.

He presses the phone to his ear and waits…

Straight to voicemail. His phone is still dead.

Soonyoung recalls the bare-bones state of his new room and imagines waking up there, in a strange body with only a suitcase and a book for company. His stomach twists. Minghao probably thinks he’s a goddamn serial killer.

Clumsily he navigates to the map app and tries to better orient himself. This apartment is on the west side of Seoul National. His own apartment is on the east side, a little further removed. Maybe a twenty minute drive, with traffic. Soonyoung Switched with his neighbor. How lucky is that?

He shoves the phone in his sweatpants pocket and returns to Junhui, who is halfway through a bowl of soup and furiously tapping a game on his phone. Footage reels across the laptop from a series of climate strikes in Europe. Harsh glare from the window prevents Soonyoung from watching, like a shield.

“Nothing yet,” Soonyoung takes the chair across from Junhui and politely tries the soup. It’s blazing hot, but to his surprise, the pain registers as pleasure on his tongue. “Maybe Minghao is still sleeping.”

Maybe Minghao is a masochist who enjoys scorching himself with spice every morning. Soonyoung finishes the bowl.

Mid-afternoon, while Soonyoung is sitting on the bed and staring at Minghao’s dog-eared paperback of Frankenstein, dazzling himself with his own brand-new hands, the phone rings.

Soonyoung answers so fast he doesn’t see the number onscreen. He brings it to his face with excitement and speaks too loudly. “Hello?”

“Is this Kwon Soonyoung?”

“Yeah. Are you—”

“Xu Minghao. You’re at my apartment? Did you meet Junhui?”

His own voice sounds different, warped under someone else’s control. Or does Soonyoung always sound like a 6-year-old on the phone?

“He fed me…” Soonyoung forgets the name. “Spicy soup.”

“Okay. I think we should meet in your apartment. You don’t have a car, right? Neither do I, but Junhui can drive you.”

The way Minghao speaks is matter-of-fact and relaxed, like they’re discussing casual lunch plans. Not the literal Switching back of their bodies. Soonyoung rubs a twitch out of his eye and wonders what he’s getting into.

“Um, sure.” He gets up to open the bedroom door. “I’ll let you talk to Junhui, then.”

It’s early afternoon when they pull up in front of Soonyoung’s apartment.

“It was nice to meet you!” Junhui drums his hands on the wheel. His smile flashes like a comet, his sleepy eyes always giving the impression that he’s about to wink. “Can’t wait to, like, actually meet you.”

“Thanks.”

Soonyoung clutches the bag of Minghao’s clothes and toiletries he’d haphazardly packed. Frankenstein is floating around the bottom like loose leaves in a teacup. Suddenly the thought of walking upstairs and being confronted by a stranger wearing his skin like a costume is not appealing. A storm surge begins in his gut.

Junhui reads into his hesitance. Apparently he’s the type of person to offer comfort to strangers. “I know it’s really scary,” he says. “But I promise Minghao is nice. Switching back doesn’t hurt.”

Soonyoung wraps his hand around the door handle. Low humming from the engine doesn’t drown out the way his heartbeat pounds in his ears. “Tell me about your Switch?”

It’s an awfully invasive question, but Soonyoung is desperate and shameless and there’s no one else around. Junhui puts the car in park.

“He lives in Los Angeles, so we met there and I got to eat burgers and açaí bowls for a week. Neither of us spoke Korean well back then. But when I touched his hand, I just…” Junhui blinks at a street pole and pauses long enough that Soonyoung assumes he’s lost his train of thought. But Junhui snaps back with a slight tilt of his chin. “I felt like me again, but amplified. Like being Joshua helped me be myself.”

That doesn’t sound so bad. Soonyoung licks his dry lips and nods. He can do that.

“Okay,” he exhales, putting on a bright smile. He squares his shoulders. “Cool! No biggie, then.”

“No biggie,” Junhui parrots. He raises a hand as if to ruffle Soonyoung’s hair, then offers a high-five instead.

Soonyoung gives him a high-five and gets out of the car. The apartment building looks the same as it did yesterday when he moved in. For a moment he forgets the number of his own place—cut him some slack, it’s been two days!—and panic dances along his spine like electricity.

He’s tempted to do all the embarrassing things he was too shy to try when he was alone in Minghao’s body. Lick his nose, snap, whistle, smell his armpits, pluck a leg hair, masturbate. All those infinite possibilities funnel away as Soonyoung approaches the door. He wishes fervently for more time, but also can’t wait to get back on solid ground. It’s a confusing mix of relief and apprehension.

Soonyoung knocks three times.

A mirror answers the door.

Nothing can prepare a person for the existential maelstrom of greeting their own body from outside of it. Soonyoung finds he can’t breathe, because even the expected takes him by surprise, and that’s _his face_ in the doorway. His own dewy skin, wide eyes, and crooked mouth. His own black joggers and white sleeveless top with the goddamn tomato sauce stain at the bottom corner.

Soonyoung looks down at his own body from a higher vantage point and feels the world tilt on its axis.

The fuck’s going on with his mouth? Are his eyes _always_ that puffy? Can everyone see his pores like that? Why do his eyebrows grow in six different ungodly directions?

Minghao uses Soonyoung’s mouth to say, “Hi. Kwon Soonyoung?”

Soonyoung uses Minghao’s mouth to say, “Uhhh.”

“Alright, before we Switch back,” Minghao says. “Can I ask for a favor?”

The apartment is still woefully under-furnished. They sit on the rug facing each other. It smells like paint. Soonyoung flicks away a stray triangle of plaster and shimmies himself into a square of light from the window.

“I’m guessing this is a new place.” Minghao leans against the wall with excellent posture. Soonyoung’s shoulders have never looked so elegant.

“Yeah, I lost my old apartment.”

Minghao looks around. “It’s nice.”

Silence crawls into the space between their feet and dies.

“Thanks,” Soonyoung says.

Nerves trace a line of energy down his tendon. He taps his right foot, sock against wood. He already reclaimed his phone and left a voicemail with his manager. He’s protected by law for the first week of absences after Switching, but who knows if his minimum wage gig will respect labor rights. The thought is less worrisome than he expected.

He looks at Minghao and Minghao looks back. They’ve gotten basic information out of the way—exchanged names and occupations and stared at each other until Soonyoung thought he might perish from the mortifying ordeal of being _lived in._ Minghao uses his eyes mercilessly. No flinching.

Soonyoung has the strangest urge to chew on his bottom lip, though that’s not a tic he usually has. “You don’t mind staying here for our fluctuation time?” he asks. “We can go out and buy a cot. Wherever you want to sleep is fine!”

“Sharing the bed works,” Minghao says plainly. “We’re supposed to stay close anyway. About that favor. Do you mind if I dye your hair?”

Soonyoung blinks. “What?”

“I liked styling my own hair a lot when I was younger, but it’s considered unprofessional in the medical field. If you don’t mind… this might be my only chance to do it again.”

“Um, depends. What color? Not like, green.” Soonyoung laughs nervously. “Right?”

“Your choice. I can make anything look nice.”

Well Soonyoung’s manager at the cafe certainly won’t give a damn, as long as he shows up to work awake and willing to be accidentally burnt by the faulty toaster oven.

There was a time he would’ve jumped at the chance to do something spontaneous. Drive to Port Stephens for the weekend with Chan. Crash a house party on the other side of campus. Slide his number to the girl walking her fat Corgi at the park. Now he’s tempted to say yes just because it gives him a little longer in this new body, away from reality and its consequences.

Soonyoung studies his own face across the room. His hair is loose in a way that makes him wonder if Minghao washed it this morning. Did he shower? Oh, god. Did he notice the ugly mole on his inner thigh? The insistent zit on his right shoulder?

Imagine if he’d gotten that tattoo of a tiger on his buttcheek. Life could be worse.

Soonyoung stretches out his legs and claps once. “Sure! Why not. Let’s go blonde.”

During those dark months where Soonyoung lived on Wonwoo’s couch, he said a lot of weird shit. They had that type of relationship, he and Wonwoo, where they could say anything to each as long as it didn’t involve pineapple pizza slander. That was a capital offense which almost ruined their relationship in middle school, and it remained off-limits.

Wonwoo never asked about the fire. Soonyoung didn’t think he was avoiding the topic until Wonwoo accidentally slipped, once.

“What do you want to watch?” Wonwoo called from the living room.

Soonyoung traipsed out of the bathroom, toothbrush sticking from his mouth, spitting spearmint all over his sleep-shirt. “Tumding punny.” He removed the toothbrush. “Something funny. Not Running Man again.”

“I was thinking horror.”

“Screw your horror, goth boy wannabe.”

“There’s a good miniseries on—oh, wait.” Wonwoo set the remote in his lap. “Are you okay with house fire scenes?”

Soonyoung contemplatively stuck his toothbrush back in his mouth. Immediately he choked on toothpaste and started coughing, lodging the bristles behind his tongue and coming dangerously close to swallowing the head. Scrambling for the sink, he spewed peppermint like a sprinkler and took deep breaths. He stumbled back to Wonwoo, hand on his chest, laughing so hard his eyes smarted with tears.

“That’s hysterical.” Soonyoung wiped his face while Wonwoo looked at him with an utterly unreadable expression. “Yeah, totally, I’d love to watch it. Can you believe I almost just died like that? Holy fuck.”

Wonwoo’s eyes went wide. “We don’t have to watch it.”

“Not the fire, I mean the toothpaste, did you just see?”

“Yeah. You’re an idiot.”

Soonyoung plopped onto the couch beside Wonwoo. The cushion melded to his ass perfectly. “Turn it on. I wanna watch the scene.”

“Are you sure?” Wonwoo didn’t lift the remote. He adjusted his glasses and observed Soonyoung like one of the Keigo Higashino novels he’s so fond of.

“Of course.” Soonyoung scratched at the flaky white toothpaste dried onto his shirt. “It’s fine. I’m not scared.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“Good. Because fire is actually beautiful, you know? When I saw it up close like that, I felt like I should stop and say a prayer or something.”

Wonwoo narrowed his eyes. “Beautiful?”

“Yeah! Fuck, there are so many colors. The way it moves makes you wonder if it’s alive. Like it was watching me that night.” He shrugged, self-conscious. “Or, I dunno. Maybe I just sound crazy.”

Soonyoung looked up and experienced a short but brief stint of déjà vu. He felt like he’d been there before, leather couch sticking to his thighs, struggling to read the closed-shutter expression on the face of his oldest friend. He had no idea what Wonwoo was thinking but Wonwoo was certainly thinking _something._

Soonyoung shouldn't have shared his thoughts. They bordered on deranged sometimes, he knew. Feeling an abstract shame, he returned to his shirt and continued flicking grains of spearmint residue onto the floor.

Wonwoo eventually said, “That doesn’t sound crazy.”

Soonyoung nodded. Then he stole the remote and pressed play to escape the thread of conversation.

Despite the countless memories split between them, maybe they couldn’t talk about this. _You had to be there_ sounded so fucking cliché. But that’s what Soonyoung thought: You had to be there. He didn’t love Wonwoo any less for not knowing how to respond. But the miscommunications made him feel hollow and lonely, an island in his grief.

At the corner market, Soonyoung and Minghao realize they have met before.

“Tell me about yourself,” Minghao says, inspecting two identical packets of bleach. He reaches up thoughtlessly to fiddle with his earlobe, but Soonyoung doesn’t have piercings, so his empty hand falls away.

They are standing an awkward distance apart. Like two strangers after a hookup, lying on uncertain sheets.

Soonyoung shrugs. “I went to school abroad, recently graduated with a degree in numbers. I’m—“ He recalls the coffeeshop stink that follows him home, corroded metal and cream. “Working at a café right now. I guess. I used to dance.”

“Really? Me too. My first dance class was in Hongdae, actually, the first time I moved here.”

“What studio?”

Minghao selects a packet of bleach and moves on to the toner. “Don’t remember. Choom and a number, or something.”

“Choom 94.” Soonyoung’s heart stutters. “Wait, are you fucking serious? I went there, too! Maybe we saw each other. You were probably in a younger class, though.”

Minghao is staring at something and it takes Soonyoung a moment to notice: the metal shelf is reflecting Minghao’s face—Soonyoung’s face—as a warped, nose-heavy parallelogram. Soonyoung finds his own reflection and sticks out his tongue.

Blinking, Minghao turns away. “I have a good memory for faces. I don’t remember yours.”

“I’ve got a shitty memory,” Soonyoung admits, trailing Minghao into the snacks-and-alcohol aisle. Their basket is already stocked with instant ramen, triangle kimbap, frozen fish, and a few fresh vegetables for the desolate fridge. “Especially for faces, it’s stupid. Do you still dance?”

“Not really. Do you?”

“Nah,” Soonyoung says.

He’s feeling antsy—it might be hunger or nerves or an acidic mix of the two—so he starts mouthing off, habitually, instinctively.

Soonyoung twists a wine bottle around to check the price and continues, “One time a Huntsman spider moved into my bathroom in Sydney, right under the sink. It was so fucking big we made _eye contact._ I couldn’t even kill it, I just let it live there for weeks until randomly it turned up like a used napkin on the floor. Totally dead. All wet, too. Like it fell in the toilet, climbed out, and _then_ drowned.”

“That’s awful,” Minghao says, hands on his hips, half-laughing. He tosses a handful of energy bars and a box of tea into the basket.

“I’m saying, I will never forget that spider. I only saw it a few dozen times. We never had a meaningful conversation. But you and I probably talked at Choom, I swear I knew everyone there as a kid! And I can’t remember you. How stupid is that?”

Minghao shrugs. “Same here. So if you’re stupid, I’m stupid.”

Reaching past Soonyoung, Minghao selects a bottle of Merlot. Mid-shelf, tones of raspberry and sandalwood, an import straight from Italy. Soonyoung carries it as they approach the register.

In line behind a few schoolgirls in bucket hats, Minghao adds, “You’re asking the wrong question anyway.”

Soonyoung raises both eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Did the spider remember you? Every morning when you walked in to piss, do you think it looked at you and thought _oh man, not this guy again.”_

Soonyoung bursts into laughter. It’s the first time he’s laughed in this body and it comes out different, a flurry of throaty giggles which he instantly loves.

“Hey, no! We were besties. It perceived me. I think—“ The idea of establishing a rapport with a spider is dumb in theory, but when Soonyoung looks back... “You know what? I think it did remember me. We had an understanding. It wouldn’t attack while I was naked and vulnerable, and I wouldn’t squash it with a shoe.”

The line moves. Soonyoung sets the wine on the counter and pays for everything with his phone while Minghao smirks at the ground like he’s imagining Soonyoung getting mauled by a giant arachnid, naked and screaming. He’s imagined it himself before—he knows exactly how funny it is.

He has yet to return the request, _Tell me about yourself._ But he’s learning about Minghao regardless. The cadence of his laugh, the pattern of his memory, the way he makes Soonyoung’s face more serious and introspective than it’s ever looked before.

They break into a gorgeous, humid dusk. Dark and rustling trees line the horizon. When Soonyoung glances over one shoulder to make sure Minghao is following, he spots the inner city skyscrapers lighting up like games of Tetris.

He takes a deep breath and fills his lungs with crisp violet air.

Minghao sets the bags on the covered toilet seat and meticulously unpacks the necessities. Bleach, toner, purple shampoo. Without looking up he asks, “So what happened to your hands?”

Soonyoung leans against the opposite wall, careful not to let their arms brush. “A fire.”

“It’s recent. They’re not completely healed.”

Obviously. Soonyoung fidgets, sleuthing a hand through his hair, wondering if he will feel the effects of the bleach through fluctuation. Jeonghan had described fluctuation as boomeranging between two bodies—a random and uncontrollable side effect that usually happens within the first 48 hours after Switching, before the bodies have a chance to stabilize.

It’s said to be painful. Because Soonyoung is himself, he is morbidly curious.

“I know they’re not healed,” Soonyoung says after a long pause.

“Are you receiving treatment?”

“Yeah. Why? Do they hurt?”

Minghao squeezes a dollop of bleach into the bowl. He fumbles with the mixing brush for a moment, brows gently creased like he wasn’t expecting their fine motor skills to differ. It’s very strange to watch your body move while you’re not in it.

“A little,” Minghao answers.

Soonyoung parrots the question. “What happened to your back?”

“A tree fell on me. It still hurts, doesn’t it?”

Yes, but Soonyoung can’t explain how. He hesitates. The denial comes out closer to a question. “No…”

“Trauma is stored in the body,” Minghao says. “Not metaphorically. I mean in a really awful, responsible way. Do your knees hurt, too? Ankles?”

Soonyoung shifts his weight, reeling his focus inward, to the uncomforts so faint they almost go unnoticed. The chronics. Like a gray tension under his skin. “Is that true? I mean, scientifically.”

Minghao sets the brush down too hard and almost flips the bowl. He looks over and gestures between their chests with a flick of his wrist. “What do you think?”

“I believe you,” Soonyoung says instantly.

Minghao stares at him for a moment before turning back to face the mirror, mixing toner and bleach and water into a gray porridge-like mess. His cheeks are pink. Soonyoung can identify the blush on his own face.

When Minghao is finished, he unlatches the showerhead and leans over to rinse his hair. The water takes a few moments to heat up, his palm investigative underneath the spray, while Soonyoung pokes at the goopy, leftover bleach.

“That was easier than I expected,” Soonyoung says. He raises his voice a touch to be heard over the water.

“Yeah.” Minghao leans over further. “When I used to—”

He overbalances in his unfamiliar body and tips forward. It happens in slow motion, Soonyoung watching his own body hurtle forward face-first into the tile, out of his control. He moves instinctually. His forearm collides with a chest. The room rushes by in a sickening whirl of white.

Next thing he knows, his elbows are crashing onto the shower floor and he’s getting drenched by room temperature water shooting straight into his chest. Fuck.

Soonyoung sputters and moves the showerhead. He draws deep, gasping breaths, dizzy and unaware that he’s shivering until his teeth clack together hard enough to catch his tongue. Minghao is trapped half underneath him, wiping shining droplets from his face. The real Minghao. Looking at him properly is enough shock to freeze Soonyoung solid.

They’ve Switched back.

“S-sorry.” Soonyoung sits up and draws his arms around himself. His scalp gently burns, but he’s freezing, and he feels seconds from dissolving into sobs for no reason at all. A lump wells in his throat. His eyes sting. Junhui didn’t mention the shock or sensory overload. “Sorry, I just…”

“It’s okay!” Minghao says. “I was finished, you’re okay.”

His voice is soft like a child’s. Shockingly, Minghao is trying not to laugh. His shoulders shake when he sits up, one hand resting heavily on Soonyoung’s knee, the other clasped over his mouth. Both eyebrows draw together like he’s not sure what’s happening. Hiccuping giggles burst out like popping bubbles. Tears form at the corners of his eyes and he wipes them away with a wobbly, semi-hysterical grin.

They both look absolutely fucking deranged.

“We have wildly different brain chemistry,” Minghao finally says.

For whatever reason, that strikes the wrong chord. Something fissures in Soonyoung’s chest. “What the hell does _that_ mean?”

Is there something fucked up about his endorphins? Well, of course there is. But he’s fine. He shouldn’t be reacting like this. Minghao shouldn’t be high as a dealer off of sheer relief from _escaping Soonyoung’s head._

His lower lip trembles and he doesn’t have the strength to stop it. The realization that Soonyoung is back in his own body permanently, forever, crashes down around him like a force worse than goddamn gravity. Water runs wastefully into the drain. This is too much to process without warning.

He hides his face in his knees and curls into himself, nails digging into his own flesh in an awful sort of grounding pain.

“I mean…” Minghao says, his voice high with tension. “No, hey, I get it.”

Slowly, hesitantly, he wraps his arms around Soonyoung. Minghao is taller but thinner. His weight pressed against Soonyoung’s front shouldn’t feel like a fortress, but. He still smells like the sandalwood cologne that Soonyoung put on this morning. The sparse hairs on his forearm are familiar. Soonyoung sinks forward into the embrace and Minghao tightens his grip, sliding from something awkward to something steady and genuine.

They drip onto the floor, half ensconced in the shower. A knot of crossed-over limbs.

Minghao rests his chin on the crown of Soonyoung’s head. “I get it,” he murmurs. “I’ve been there.”

Soonyoung’s throat is thick and wet. He thinks of those perfect, porcelain hands. How light he felt ascending the stairs here. Carefully he pushes Minghao off and stands.

“I’ll finish rinsing myself,” Soonyoung says.

Minghao’s face falls. There is something unhappy there which Soonyoung can’t read, and he hopes to god it’s not pity. But Minghao doesn’t argue—just picks himself up and leaves the room. The temperature drops a few lonesome degrees.

When Soonyoung thinks back to the fire, the worst parts were the _waiting_ and the _waking up._

Waiting was rough because he never knew what was coming. Every hour Chan forwarded a new Twitter thread of the fire’s creeping progress, captured on shaky videos from someone’s backyard patio overlooking the hills.

_Do you see this hahahahah,_ Chan texted. _We’re so fucked hahhah!_

Soonyoung replied with an upside down smile emoji. The university sent increasingly stressful emails with increasingly less helpful information. His apartment lingered in the caution zone. For days, the sky was yellow. Salt and pepper ash collected on the outside windowsill. He watched the air quality index spike and fall, spike and rise.

Normally Soonyoung liked having an east-facing room because the blinding sun would wake him for work. On smokey days, the sun rose like a displaced orange through a gray stew sky. He startled out of restless sleep into a room cast in demonic colors. Nightmares blended with reality.

He stayed home and fielded questions via email for work. When his refrigerator ran empty of everything but beer, he crept to the grocery store in a mask that did nothing to prevent his face from feeling sticky afterwards. A layer of sooty film descended over the world.

It was awful. Apocalyptic. Soonyoung shut himself in his office with the half-baked draft of his boss’s spreadsheet, plugging his ears with music and trying to forget the horrors beyond his body.

Didn’t help. He woke up with smoke in his nose anyway.

Dinner is an uncomfortable engagement.

Soonyoung isn’t hungry, but Minghao has arranged their groceries into a meal on the table. There’s fluffy rice, a few slices of pan-fried fish, and packets of soy sauce. It’s hard to deny that offering. With no chairs, they eat standing up, eyes like maligned orbits. No contact.

But—Soonyoung can’t help undressing Minghao in his head. Bare feet, shins covered by long jeans. The bones of his ankles were so sharp in Soonyoung’s—Minghao’s—soft palm. Carnal knowledge feels like a lost tooth, a raw and tingling space he keeps poking at for sick entertainment. He remembers being in that body. He remembers being that body.

Fucking weird, is what it is.

Minghao eventually breaks the silence, after he’s chased down every grain of rice on his plate.

“Your hair looks nice,” he says quietly. Generous.

“Thanks.” Soonyoung didn’t get a good look after rinsing. He had avoided his reflection. “Do I look like an idol?” He flutters his fingers under his chin in an obnoxious pose.

Minghao reels in a smile. “No comment.”

The atmosphere warms, just like that. Soonyoung’s talents put to good use. His spirits lift an inch at a time.

“I have you to thank,” Soonyoung says. “If I touched the bleach myself I’d end up bald somehow.”

“Don’t go bald. You can’t pull it off.”

Soonyoung laughs. This time it feels more real, more rooted in his chest. “Shit, okay! Noted.”

Minghao sits forward. “By the way, do you speak any Chinese?”

“A little! Why?”

“When I was talking to Junhui on the phone, I was using your tongue and mouth and—um—“ Minghao’s words catch up with his brain and he blushes. He’s cute like that, nose pink. “It just didn’t feel the same. Speaking Chinese.”

Soonyoung kicks his feet under the table and thinks of how Minghao’s teeth felt like a row of blunt stones. “Weird. I should’ve tried an English tongue twister with your mouth.”

“That would’ve hurt my jaw.”

They wash the dishes side-by-side. Minghao scrubs and Soonyoung places each dish on the drying rack, play-acting rituals like roommates or spouses. Soonyoung hums under his breath, as he likes to do, and Minghao watches from the corner of his eye with soap licking down both wrists.

“I feel bad,” Soonyoung comments when they finish. “I don’t have a towel for you. Here—“

He grabs Minghao’s hands and uses the bottom of his own shirt to dry them. A weird vibration trails where their skin touches, like he’s pressed against a purring cat, or his laptop’s warm whirring bottom. He accidentally wipes the tomato stain over Minghao’s hands.

“Uh.” Minghao draws back stiffly, nose wrinkled. “Thanks.”

“Better than nothing,” Soonyoung says, and Minghao offers him a smile.

Crawling into bed that night, Soonyoung is forced to reckon with his own irresponsibility.

“So I only have one pillow.” He sits cradled in the sheets, looking up at Minghao outlined in blue moonlight. “You can take it, but I’m not liable for any weird shit I do in my sleep.”

The shock of being stuffed back into his own body has already made the Switch feel like a dream. He’s losing pieces of how it felt to be Minghao, specific sensations sloughing off his brain like bonito flakes from a takoyaki. But Soonyoung’s been having trouble with that for months—remembering things.

“God,” Minghao mutters. “Do you snore?”

“No, but I kick like a stallion.” Soonyoung makes a braying, horselike noise. “Like, I become an eight-legged monster.”

Minghao sits at the edge of the mattress. He shifts the sheets like glass, moves like he’s getting naked when he’s only sliding into a comfortable position. He scoots closer to Soonyoung’s body until they sit knee-to-knee, draped royally in 400 thread count sheets.

Soonyoung hands over the pillow. He can feel the difference of Minghao’s proximity in his cells—a deep and thrumming relaxation. Clean. Like he just exited the sauna, or had a really good fuck.

“It’s fine,” Minghao says. “I’ll kick you back.”

They need to stay as close as possible for at least the next 48 hours to consummate Switching back. Soonyoung lays down with his neck ramrod straight and tries not to move.

Despite the odd sleeping arrangements, he nightmares.

_Soonyoung is standing in the center of a vast desert, surrounded on all sides by endless dunes of red clay and gritty sand. No shrubs cling to the valleys, no tiny lizards dart away from his feet._

_He walks through the burning sun under a sky that blotches from blue into lavender into violet and back, like a finger painting. Thirst brings Soonyoung to his knees. He cups a handful of sand to his mouth and drinks. It tastes like spoiled tomato, the kind left in a sandwich too long._

_Every mouthful burns his tongue and throat, scorches his esophagus and gut. His tongue, his throat. His esophagus, his gut. His tongue his throat his esophagus his gut. Tongue throat esophagus gut._

_He chokes the sand down anyway. His body becomes an hourglass. Soonyoung is struck with the knowledge that he must consume the whole desert or he’ll die, he’ll just fucking die, and he can feel a presence lurking behind the easel of sky like he’s being watched by something omniscient and unfathomably large just out of sight._

_Watching. Watching. Watchingwatching wa t cch ign w tac hn ig w i atcg n whtchaiinwhgtainhc._

_Soonyoung scoops the sand faster. A seventeen-tailed scorpion with Chan’s face wriggles out of his grip and deflates like a balloon. His stomach expands with a hot heaviness as his skin begins to blister from the inside out—_

Soonyoung comes back to himself shaking. He’s breathing shallowly, his heart rate accelerated, and it takes several discombobulated seconds to forcefully relax his muscles and recognize the sensation of a hand on his face.

He opens his eyes. Minghao is stomach-down in the dark, idly petting Soonyoung’s hair.

Soonyoung makes a sound like an inquisitive half-dead feral cat. He stretches both arms above his head, wincing when his knuckles collide with the wall, and Minghao shifts to accommodate his movements without releasing the pressure on his hair. Comforting.

“You were dreaming,” Minghao states the obvious.

“Oops. Sorry if I woke you.”

“You didn’t.” Aggressive white light slams the bridge of Minghao’s nose as he checks his phone. “It’s almost 4am.”

Soonyoung makes the mistake of turning towards the window. From this vantage point he can see the streetlights like a line of egg yolk in the dark. Their edges drip out in a funny way, as if he’s looking through—

Smoke. Soonyoung sits up and grabs the windowsill, dislodging Minghao’s hand. Is that smoke? His heart, which had only just slowed, revs into ten wheel drive. No, that can’t be smoke. He squints. The street is shrouded in fog. Mist. Water, not fire.

He exhales and collapses back against the bed, suddenly stewing in the onset of a headache. “Thought I saw something,” he mumbles. “Still dreaming. Why were you awake?”

Minghao looks utterly foreign in the dark. The supple lines of his body have sagged like a pillow shedding its stuffing. He’s older and more weathered like this. Bags are visible under both sharp eyes.

“I don’t sleep much,” he says. “Helps with med school.”

Soonyoung puffs up his cheeks with air before exhaling a sigh. “You have insomnia.”

“Something like that.”

“What do you normally do when you can’t sleep?”

The way Minghao flashes his teeth makes Soonyoung glad he asked. The smirk gets tucked away, though, a flare guttering out. Minghao only burrows into the pillow and says, “I sit by the river. I can show you where, if you want. The spot is very relaxing.”

Soonyoung’s reply is tangled in a yawn. “I’d like that.”

His eyes slip shut, adrenaline whispering away. Minghao’s presence is soothing in an unexpected way. Maybe this is a symptom of fluctuation because it feels supernatural that Soonyoung would fall back to sleep this fast...

Until Minghao whispers, “Did you hear there’s a low pressure area coming up through the strait?”

Wide fucking awake. Soonyoung hears the click of his own throat as he swallows. He shakes his head and stares at the ceiling.

“It’s going to be upgraded to a typhoon if it maintains this momentum,” Minghao says. “Probably making landfall as a Category 2 in Busan.”

“Whoa.”

“That’s why I can’t sleep tonight.”

Soonyoung rolls onto his side so they’re face-to-face. He thinks about reaching over and taking Minghao’s hand. He thinks about it so hard that he does it.

Minghao’s eyes catch the yolky streetlight and shine like little stars. He threads his fingers through Soonyoung’s.

“Sooo,” Soonyoung says, mouth suddenly dry. “You’re scared of storms?”

“Not exactly. Just, that’s how I got the scar on my back. The tree fell during a typhoon. I was standing beside the window.”

This is where Soonyoung should say something normal and sympathetic, like I’m sorry that happened to you. Or, do you want to talk about it? Instead he’s imagining himself in Minghao’s younger body, listening to glass shatter, watching a narrow shadow come to life and block out the world.

“Did it hurt?” he asks.

“More than anything. I thought I would die.”

“Me too. When I…” Soonyoung’s eyes slide to their linked hands. “I was running out of the building. I didn’t know if my neighbors made it out and because I’m an idiot, I grabbed their doorknob to check. The thing was on fire, literally. The pain was bad enough that I almost passed out. Would’ve fried like a rotisserie chicken.”

Minghao makes a commiserative noise. “When did it happen?”

“A few months ago. Hey, I made it onto Australian TV, though. Got interviewed by some shitty local news network.”

A laugh is huffed through Minghao’s nose. “There’s a silver lining.”

Soonyoung shrugs. That’s how he handles the memories he still has: holding them gently until they get too heavy, then making them small with humor. He drapes himself in silver linings like tinsel on a tree, shelters behind the sour aftertaste of unfunny jokes. He can’t handle rawdogging the memories—his brain just hasn’t worked the same since leaving Sydney, despite his general okay-ness. Minghao might know that better than anyone.

Minghao surprises him by adding, “Tell me more.”

He doesn’t soften it with _please_ or _will you._ It’s a demand. Soonyoung rises to the challenge, fidgeting and fully attentive, accidentally kicking his heel against Minghao’s thigh under the sheets.

“Sorry. Well. You know what happened, I lost my apartment and moved back to Seoul. I’m still looking for a real office position. Anything accounting-adjacent.”

Minghao makes a quiet noise of assent. Words bubble up like a pot throwing out steam.

“I need money, though,” Soonyoung continues. “And the group interviews are always on weekday mornings when I’m working. I feel like I’m supposed to know how to fix everything and I just don’t. I lost my whole life in that fire. Making decisions now is so much effort and it’s just… it’s really hard to...”

Soonyoung trails off.

He thinks about army-crawling through the past few months, both elbows in the mud. Living in sludgy impropriety on Wonwoo’s couch. Drowning in a grief he couldn’t name. He’s getting better, but why isn’t he simply flattened with gratitude that he survived? Why is everything so complicated?

After all this time, why is he still in bed with the fucking fire?

He finishes with a succinct, “It’s tough. Ya know?”

They are still holding hands. That isn’t important until it is. Minghao’s thumb swipes tenderly along the back of Soonyoung’s hands, over the hills and valleys of his knuckles, a tingling and featherlight touch. He lingers over the pink, raised flesh on the web of his thumb. Almost like he knows exactly how to hold Soonyoung to make him feel present and cherished and now.

“Do you have someone to talk to?” Minghao asks. His eyes shift over Soonyoung’s face in time with his thumb, tracing affectionate patterns like an artist prepping for a portrait. Eyes, nose, lips. “You mentioned you were living with a friend.”

“I don’t really talk about it. I don’t know how.”

It’s easier with you, he thinks. A stranger who has never felt like a stranger.

“Is that why—“ Minghao cuts himself off. “I don’t know how else to say this. Is that why you’re hurting?”

Soonyoung blinks. “Hurting where?”

Minghao takes his free hand and drags it possessively down Soonyoung’s face, down his throat and over his shirt and _lower,_ until he knocks against the waistband of Soonyoung’s shorts. The contact falls away. Soonyoung shivers. A warm trail smolders in the wake of that palm like embers fizzling out.

“Here,” Minghao says. “Everywhere.”

Soonyoung nods. Yes, that’s why he’s hurting. And he _is_ hurting. To hear that confirmed by someone else is a relief—so staggering that it mimics joy. Someone knows. Someone believes Soonyoung without him having to vocalize, I think I’m broken. I think I’m insane.

Minghao continues, his voice stronger. “I know what that’s like. Different, I mean, but I’ve been there. I felt like that after the typhoon.”

“So you could... teach me? How to get better.”

“No, I—that’s…” Minghao struggles, his mouth pouty with frustration. “Yes, but no. I can tell you what helped me. But what worked for my situation might not work for you. Recovery is different for everyone, and I don’t want to dictate… I can’t…”

He pauses and sits up on his elbows. Selects his next words carefully.

“I empathize with you, but I can’t save you. Because if you think there is something broken inside of you, then it needs to be you who addresses that.”

The disappointment is immediate and bitter as vinegar in the back of Soonyoung’s throat. What was he expecting, a free therapist? A quick fix-it? A cheat he hasn’t thought of, a secret to contentment hidden in a med student’s textbooks? Life doesn’t work that way.

But still. He had hoped, for a brief moment, and now that hope is extinguished.

“I get it,” Soonyoung mumbles. He flops onto his back and faces the ceiling. “I know that. Theoretically.”

Minghao’s eyelashes flutter when he frowns. “But that doesn’t mean you have to do it alone.” He casts his glowing eyes to the sky with embarrassment. “Your friend is here for you. I’m here for you. We’re—I mean, the two of us are kinda bonded for life now. I care about you.”

“Okay,” Soonyoung whispers. It feels like he’s holding his beating heart in his mouth. “Well, um. I’m here for you, too. If you want that.”

It’s quiet for a moment. Soonyoung can’t meet his eyes.

“I do want that,” Minghao says.

Soonyoung presses his tongue to his cheek to keep from smiling. It’s soft, and sleepy, but his relief is real. “Hey, has anyone ever told you you’d make a good doctor?”

“I want to be a pediatrician, not a therapist.”

“Consider switching career paths. That’s all I’m saying.”

He feels Minghao’s huffy exhale against his cheek. It turns into a yawn as he deflates. Soonyoung turns over to face Minghao again, the whole imperfect sum of him, and watches his pretty face go slack as he fights to keep both eyes open. He’s exhausted. It’s charming.

Soonyoung can’t resist. He says, “Hey.”

“Hmm.”

“What if I’m never okay again?”

That’s the question needling him most. What if the nightmares never stop? What if his old self, his true self, was entirely burnt away by the fire?

Minghao’s eyes have already slipped closed. Blindly he reaches out and links his fingers loosely around Soonyoung’s wrist. Two of his hands clutch onto one of Soonyoung’s. Their skin tingles at the warm points of contact, like stars are embedded in Minghao’s fingertips.

“Even then,” Minghao says. “I’ll still be here.”

Months later, Soonyoung will look into that typhoon. He will read the statistics—wind speed both sustained and gusts, casualties, people displaced, property damage—and draw Minghao into a tight hug. He’ll whisper sweet endearments into the shell of his ear and think, thank god thank god thank god.

Then he will get Minghao flat on his stomach on the couch and fuck him, kiss him everywhere, kiss the pink fern scar like he can heal it with his own mouth, until Minghao shakes apart and cries beneath him.

They’re eating a peaceful breakfast when Soonyoung brings it up again.

White morning sunlight pours through the room like milk in an empty mug. A talk radio show is playing faintly from Soonyoung’s phone, some woman describing the lyrics to an English song. _If the world was ending you’d come over, right? You’d come over and you’d stay the night?_

Soonyoung stirs four packets of sugar into his tea and Minghao gives him an unimpressed look over their rice and eggs.

“What was it like for you?” Soonyoung sets down the spoon with a clink. “Right after the typhoon, I mean.”

“I don’t know how to describe it.”

Soonyoung, as always, is shameless. “Will you try?”

“Well, my mom and I stayed in a hotel for a while. We moved back to Seoul. I studied fourteen hours a day.” Minghao chews thoughtfully. He eats like a ballet dancer, which is to say, barely. “I saw a therapist for a while. I’ll give you her number, she’s good with… our kind of situation.”

“Damn. I don’t have insurance.”

“When you get a better job, you will.” Minghao’s eyes go as wide as the sky. “Oh, you—you’re bleeding.”

A twinkling itch takes root in Soonyoung’s nose. He feels the dampness before he reaches up to swipe over his philtrum; his fingers come away with red polka dots. A nosebleed. Mechanically he pushes back his chair and goes to the sink.

“No worries!” He leans back and pinches his nose, winking obnoxiously. The trickle over his mouth slows but doesn’t stop. “I think I’ll survive.”

If Wonwoo were here, he’d smile and scrunch up his nose and the topic would change. Minghao doesn’t laugh. He looks over with furrowed brows. His hair is like a wavy bird’s nest, the ones constructed out of spit by swiftlets—matted and voluminous.

“Do you get nosebleeds often?” he asks.

“Recently, yeah. Probably from all the shitty air in Sydney.”

“Let me see.” Minghao sets down his chopsticks and crosses the room to join Soonyoung.

His proximity comes as a surprise. Soonyoung leans back, one arm pillared on the sink ledge, feeling himself stiffen against the urge to lean closer. Minghao’s hands are gentle when he moves Soonyoung’s jaw side-to-side, inspecting his nose. There’s a pale constellation of acne on his cheek.

Soonyoung is struck with the awful wish to kiss Minghao.

It would be so easy to lean forward and do it. Bleed over both their mouths like a brand. He knows how plush those lips can be. He knows how soft Minghao’s hair is and wants to wrap the strands around his own throat. He knows the miracle of those eyelashes, all the whirring and breathing parts of him, and he wants to get closer.

Soonyoung has felt how Minghao takes care of himself. He wishes, now, to be taken care of, too.

Minghao releases his jaw with a solemn expression. “Bad news.”

“Break it down for me, doc.”

“You have ten minutes to live.”

Soonyoung giggles so hard he dislodges his own hand. The dam breaks—blood gushes over his chin, a burst of color, and he whines into the running faucet while trying to clean himself off. Minghao wipes the blood from his mouth with a pajama sleeve, heedless of the stain. Soonyoung’s heart takes flight and soars.

“I’m bored,” Soonyoung announces later that afternoon.

Minghao glances over from the bed, where he’s resting comfortably on his back and reading a medical journal on his phone. He does not look amused. Soonyoung assumes he’ll be ignored—he knows from Wonwoo how annoyingly persistent he can be—but Minghao humors him.

“Then let’s do something.” Minghao sits up.

“Do you want to get your textbooks?” Soonyoung feels a little self-conscious. He pulls up his legs to sit criss-cross on the table. “Or we could attend your classes. I really don’t mind! Don’t want to keep you from learning about gallbladder removal surgery, or whatever.”

Minghao smirks. “No. This is my last opportunity to relax before clinicals. We’re not going to class.”

“Oh. Well. What about the park?”

“Sure, but. I know someplace better.”

So they visit the arboretum.

Summer is a hazy shroud around their shoulders, heavy and warm. The day is splendid and golden and studded with the first shedding leaves of autumn. They’re accidentally matching in sleeveless tops, though Soonyoung’s is blue and has a tiny Spongebob sewn on the pocket. He looks twelve years old and his skin feels perpetually damp. Curse his perpetually sweaty body.

All the normal smalltalk associated with meeting someone new feels improper with Minghao. What, are they supposed to exchange bodies and traumatic backstories, _then_ chat about the weather? He says nothing at all.

It’s not until they’re strolling underneath bare cherry blossom trees that Soonyoung breaks. “So, you know how they say water has memory?”

“Who’s they?”

“Scientists. I dunno. The upper class of academia who are supposed to save us from the eventual heat death of the universe.”

Minghao gives him a weird look, then fiddles with the camera settings on his phone. He shades his face despite wearing new orange-tinted sunglasses from the kiosk. The color makes Soonyoung think of tigers, which he enjoys.

“Okay,” Minghao says. “Sure, go on.”

“Do you think trees have memory, too? I know they have an understanding of their own lives, because of the rings in their trunks. But do you think they store memories of their outside environment?”

Maybe he’s only spewing nonsense, but Soonyoung’s been thinking about this a lot recently. Even before seeing Minghao’s scar.

Sometimes his dreams dwarf him in a redwood forest. He approaches trees so tall he can’t see their spires and they tell stories of how the world once looked—he doesn’t understand when they speak, it sounds like hissing snakes and the guqin—but he presses a palm flat to their rough skin and thinks, I’m listening. I hear you. We are together in this remembrance.

Soonyoung likes those dreams. Even though he wakes up feeling spooked and thirsty. He wishes he could share them, push them into Minghao like his brain is a receptacle. Like osmosis.

“Maybe,” Minghao says thoughtfully. “How old is the oldest tree?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll look it up.” He thumbs across his phone for a few seconds. “Almost 10,000 years old.”

“What the fuck.” Soonyoung laughs. “I thought, like, a thousand years max. That’s crazy! What the fuck.”

“That’s older than Korea.”

“That’s older than civilization.”

They stop in front of an exhibit of dry brush. Other groups, families and elderly couples, float past like mirages. Soonyoung feels like the two of them are cut off from the rest of the world—behind a mosaic of stained glass where the panels are all yellow and red, red and yellow. He wants to slot his fingers between the lowest knobs of Minghao’s spine, where their scars would kiss.

But Soonyoung is trying to imagine what that tree has seen, like a ten thousand year time lapse, like the universe’s greatest movie. Empires built and destroyed. Men born and murdered in the time it takes for one leaf to bud.

“Does it ever fuck you up how plants are basically immortal?” he asks.

Minghao shrugs. “So are stem cells. So are cancer cells. If you think about it, water’s immortal. What’s truly fucked up,” he pauses, “are _mushrooms.”_

“Why?”

“They aren’t plants, they aren’t animals. Some kill you and some cure the most obscure of ailments. They started this world and they’ll end it, too.” He leans closer. “We should fear fungi.”

Soonyoung bursts into peals of laughter and startles a lizard on the railing. It scurries into the shadows.

“You’re so funny,” he says, and Minghao blushes.

“I’m completely serious!”

“That’s why you’re funny,” Soonyoung coos, and maybe it’s too endearing but he likes acting this way. Filling his pockets with the happy moments and pressing them like bars of gold into other people’s palms. “I like it. You’re good at being sincere and you’re good at playing, too.”

Minghao shakes his head with a smile. In this light his face is a jewel. Mid-afternoon, the sky a beautiful periwinkle, he doesn’t look like a man that Soonyoung would approach at a party—more like someone he would act outrageously drunk in front of, in hopes of attracting their snide attention, which is better than nothing at all.

They pause in front of a grey-green bush. Leafy shadows flutter across Minghao’s face. Soonyoung looks at him and sees the whole fucking universe.

“Thanks, I guess,” Minghao mumbles.

As they stand beneath Seoul’s foremost collection of foliage, Soonyoung thinks of a chapter in _Love Stories._ Two women, Lian and Mei, lived on opposite sides of a large and dangerous mountain. They met during a rare trading voyage and fell in love. Deep, true love—the kind others ridiculed for its childlike hope. The kind Soonyoung has never really believed in.

The women agreed to meet at the base of an enormous cherry blossom tree every two weeks, equidistant from their villages and separate from the perils of the mountain, until the Switch inevitably set them down opposing paths. This was their indulgence.

For years they kept this tradition, meeting every two weeks with the exception of snowy winters. Until one such frozen morning when they Switched unexpectedly. In a blessing from the gods, they Switched with each other. Lian woke up in Mei’s body, and Mei woke up in Lian’s.

Mei assumed they would rendezvous on the mountain path with escorts, as tradition dictated. She climbed the frozen cliffs and waited for hours. Days. But Lian never showed.

Because Lian had assumed they would meet privately under their tree, as they had for years. She froze to death, waiting faithfully. They never got to Switch back. Mei lost her lover and her original body in one unfortunate miscommunication.

Soonyoung fucking hates that story. More than Romeo and Juliet, more than Achilles and Patroclus, the tragedy of Lian and Mei makes him irrationally angry. The first time he read that chapter, he needed to put the book down and kill something on Wonwoo’s PUBG account. At the time he thought, how horrible. How frustrating.

Now he thinks… did that cherry blossom tree see everything? Did it mourn? Did it remember the girls who kissed under its petals every spring, even long after they were gone from the Earth?

The tree that nearly killed Minghao—did it know? What about the typhoon?

What about the fire?

Minghao snaps a photo of a pretty bird in the brush. “Look, a magpie.” He points with his chin and dissolves Soonyoung’s thoughts into the breeze. “They’re good luck.”

“Yeah,” Soonyoung says, taking a deep breath. “We should make a wish.”

It’s a half-absurd suggestion, but Minghao goes still like he’s thinking. He has a wonderful control over silence, so Soonyoung doesn’t break it, even though he wants to say _kidding!_

Minghao does a slow blink like a cat. “Okay. Done.”

What does Soonyoung want? He wants ice cream. He wants to be nineteen again. He wants the soft red sweater he didn’t pack in the go-bag before evacuation, because once it was a gift from his sister and he can still recall the light in her face whenever he wore it around her. Now it’s dust and ash.

“I wish I had ice cream right now,” Soonyoung says brightly.

Minghao laughs and cards his bangs back. “You’re not supposed to spoil the wish.”

“Well, I just did. And we’re getting ice cream.” Soonyoung wraps an arm loosely around Minghao’s shoulders and steers him towards the entrance, where he spotted a dessert tent earlier. “My treat.”

“Oh I’ll pay for mine, that’s okay.”

“Let me minimum wage spoil you. I’m older. Buy me ice cream when you’re a doctor.”

Minghao’s mouth turns up, like he’s satisfied, as he latches onto Soonyoung’s arm. “Fine, fine.”

They order contrasting flavors—coffee for Soonyoung and rainbow sherbert for Minghao—and find a bench in front of a truly spectacular pile of rocks.

Soonyoung devours his cone in thirty seconds. He wipes sticky fingers on a deflated napkin and gets up to toss out the trash. When he turns back to the bench, he gets an eyeful of Minghao sucking pink sherbert from the end of a spoon like some sort of NSFW model.

Minghao’s eyes are glazed beneath the orange sunglasses, looking out vaguely over the rocks. His hair flutters like a nest of birdlings in the breeze. Soonyoung is struck dumb by how pretty he is—slim fingers, shiny mouth, peek-a-boo tongue. He remembers how Minghao’s lips were chewed up when they Switched.

Soonyoung sits and jostles their knees together. “What kind of chapstick do you use?”

“Why?” Minghao slants him a suspicious glance.

“No reason.”

It would be awkward to explain, I’ve been noticing your mouth nonstop. Ever since it was mine for a day.

Minghao stiffens. “If you’re about to, like, call in a mass order of my chapstick flavor I will stop talking to you. That’s a new level of weird.”

“Relax.” Soonyoung knocks their shoulders together. He can almost feel the reverb pass through his own bones like a Newton’s Cradle. “You’re not _that_ cool.”

Soonyoung, who has little sense of respectability, invades the bag he packed of Minghao’s necessities that evening and retrieves the copy of Frankenstein.

The cover isn’t in great condition, which surprises him now that he’s seen how finicky Minghao gets about cleanliness. Soonyoung will often abandon dishes for days in a dungeon-like sink—but the apartment is spotless right now. No mold yet. Wonwoo would be fucking astonished.

Minghao returns from the bathroom to find Soonyoung flat on his back on the floor, already four pages deep.

He takes a seat beside Soonyoung on the rug. “You like science fiction?”

“Not really.” Soonyoung lets the book fall closed on his chest, where the spine tips into his armpit. “I just saw it on your shelf and shoved it in the bag. Did you know this book was written in 1816?”

“I didn’t.”

Soonyoung rolls over, displacing the book, squishing it under his ribcage as he scuttles closer to Minghao and hooks an arm tentatively around his waist. He wants to feel the glowing warmth of Minghao’s skin, smell his subtle sandalwood cologne, as he tells this story.

Minghao leans closer, bangs falling in his eyes. The way he moves with Soonyoung, it’s like he’s always saying touch me, come closer. It’s doing strange things to Soonyoung’s heart.

“It was called the year without a summer,” Soonyoung says. “The largest recorded volcanic eruption in history happened the year before, at Mount Tambora in Indonesia. It was so severe that thousands of people were killed and the whole globe was blanketed in ash. Crops died. People starved.”

Minghao blinks. Cloudy light from the window blankets his skin, gives him a princely and dreamlike atmosphere. He reaches for a lock of Soonyoung’s dry hair to twirl.

“Even way up in Europe, it was freezing when it should’ve been hot. The sky was dark all day. The author—“ Soonyoung plucks the book from under his body and holds it up against the light. A gilded rectangle. “Escaped to a vacation house in Switzerland with her friends and wrote ghost stories. So Frankenstein was born. Isn’t that funny? You’d never guess.”

“Funny,” Minghao echoes. “Did you learn that at school?”

“Nah, just an article on Naver.”

Six pages deep into the search results for climate crisis, but no one needs to know that.

When Minghao giggles, the clouds shift and the room fills with sweet sunlight. “Doubt it’s true.”

Surrendering to impulse, Soonyoung catches the hand in his hair and brings it to his throat. He presses Minghao’s fingers beside the vulnerable pulsating skin where his heart says here! Even though he knows Minghao would not hurt him, he shivers.

“You can feel it, right.” Soonyoung refocuses. “I’m not lying.”

“I believe _you._ Just not Naver.”

Soonyoung grins. “Know what else Naver said? The author had sex on her mother’s grave once. Imagine that.”

Minghao extends his fingers, pushes down on Soonyoung’s throat with gentle pressure. Soonyoung goes silent and still, like a blanket’s been tossed over his brain. He wants to lift those fingers to his mouth. He wants them inside him.

The moment stretches, gets heavier. Soonyoung wants to say, tell me about the tree that almost cleaved your spine. Show me where it hurts to be alive.

Show me how to reclaim that hurt.

A shrill alarm rings from the oven. Minghao rolls away and goes to check on dinner.

Near the end of their allotted 48 hours together, Soonyoung looks up from a game on his phone and confesses, “I wish we could induce fluctuation.”

Minghao is sitting cross-legged in front of the window, eyes closed, meditating between the open night sky and long shadows from the lamp. Soonyoung had spent thirty seconds trying to copy him before his brain led a coup d’etat.

“There’s no guaranteed way,” Minghao says.

“I know, but we’ll never have the chance to experience this again. It was kinda special.”

Minghao opens his eyes halfway. Their proximity—sitting close enough for their knees to almost brush, the heat of their skin mingling—is suddenly unbearable. Soonyoung gets up and plugs in his phone across the room. He leans against the table, jiggling his leg, rather than sit back down. Evening humidity slinks through the window.

Carefully Minghao picks himself up and stretches both arms above his head. “I’ve heard a theory,” he begins, popping both shoulders with a satisfied exhale. His eyes are still heavy when they find Soonyoung and pin him against the table. “It might not work, but we could try it. If you’re willing.”

Willing? What a daunting word. Soonyoung nods immediately. He thinks, let me live in a body at peace again. No price is too high.

He’s never been one to downplay his desire. It must be plain as day all over his face, in the heat rising on his neck. Minghao checks his own phone first, then places it facedown on the table. He has to lean over Soonyoung to do so. Soft sweaters brush together. Soonyoung locks his shoulders against a shiver.

“Then tell me if you want to stop,” Minghao says.

Soonyoung braces himself on the table with both hands. Minghao approaches like a predator—leaning in slowly, eyes wide and focused. He covers Soonyoung’s hands with his own, claw-like, and kisses him.

It’s nasty from the start. Pent-up anticipation unleashes like a brushfire inside Soonyoung, leaping and twirling, disintegrating any hesitation. He opens under Minghao’s mouth and pushes back with languid tongue and teeth.

The shape of him is glorious and familiar.

Minghao is just as eager. He tastes like cabernet and ice, though they haven’t been drinking. A tongue peeks into Soonyoung’s mouth and Soonyoung’s breath hitches. He leans into another angle, deeper, coaxing and insistent. When his hips squirm forward, Minghao’s hand flexes over his and grips tighter.

“You’re—really into this,” Minghao breaks away with a slick noise.

Soonyoung doesn’t have enough pride to be embarrassed. “It’s been a while. You’re hot.”

Luckily he doesn’t have to ask for more. Minghao stares at him for half a second, mouth parted in surprise or desire or maybe both, before reeling him back in. This time Minghao’s mouth is gentler, soft and ticklish like fleece. One hand cradles the back of Soonyoung’s neck.

They kiss like lovers. They kiss like they know how to drive each other crazy. They’ve never touched this way before, but it doesn’t feel like that at all.

Inquisitive fingers slip below Soonyoung’s shirt. He shivers. His body thrums under Minghao’s hands, warm on his waist, moving higher and rucking up the fabric of his sweater.

Minghao’s teeth flirt relentlessly with Soonyoung’s bottom lip, scraping and nibbling as he kisses. Soonyoung takes a sharp breath. The heat of their chests, close together, is distracting. He wants to hear the warring pounding of their hearts. He feels overwhelmed and they’ve barely started, one hand clutching desperately at the crook of Minghao’s elbow for stability.

Minghao breaks away to nose at Soonyoung’s jaw, encouraging him to bare his throat. He presses open-mouthed kisses in a messy arc downwards. Hot and wet and possessive.

With one hand Minghao starts unbuttoning Soonyoung’s sweater. When they break apart, Soonyoung stares at his face, how the lamp spotlights the intense line of his jaw, his kiss-pink mouth. In a flash Soonyoung is free of his sweater. Instead of feeling cowed, he feels liberated.

Tangling their fingers together, Minghao nods his chin toward the bed. “This okay?”

“Yeah,” Soonyoung says. Fuck yeah it is.

Clumsy but eager, he wraps both hands around Minghao’s waist and pushes him toward the mattress. Minghao is giggling into his mouth when they arrive, teeth clacking awkwardly, fumbling over the sheets for a handful of chest—Soonyoung blushes—or ass—Minghao writhes.

They end up kissing bare-chested where the bed meets the wall. Soonyoung is spread over Minghao’s lap, balanced on his deceptively strong thighs. He presses a palm over the thickening length of his own dick and makes a small noise into the kiss.

Minghao plucks his hand away like a shedded hair. “Don’t touch yourself.”

“I—“

“I want to touch you,” Minghao says, ending all discussion.

Soonyoung lets him. They tumble sideways, Soonyoung on his back, so Minghao can unfasten both of their jeans. A few shimmies, a wild kick, and they’re free. Fully bared.

He should be nervous, right? Getting naked with someone for the first time—especially someone he technically _just met_ —is a little scary. And yet.

Minghao has already seen him. Been him.

Plus, Soonyoung’s too invested to care. He wants this viciously, singularly. He lifts his hips without thought, seeking to grind friction from Minghao’s thigh. Minghao wraps both hands around his waist to push him down. He’s careful not to touch Soonyoung where it matters.

A breathy, frustrated noise escapes Soonyoung’s throat. Minghao kisses him into silence, languorous and indulgent. The gentle weight of his body settles into Soonyoung’s muscles, disseminating relaxation through his body like ingesting a pot of lavender tea. The rest of the world burns away. Soonyoung melts into the bed. His head lolls back.

Soonyoung knows himself to be overeager. He didn’t expect Minghao to be patient enough to deal with it.

Satisfied, Minghao sits up. “You look good like this.”

“What, underneath you?”

“Happy.” Minghao leans down to kiss him again, again, again.

Soonyoung moans. He feels like he’s been punched in the gut, in the best way, like he might cry if he can’t fuck Minghao right now. He yanks him closer by the shoulders and slides his tongue deep into his mouth. Filthy and so good.

He sneaks a hand between them to palm curiously at Minghao’s dick. During the Switch he was so timid, reluctant to cross boundaries. Now he’s emboldened by explicit consent. Minghao inhales sharply at the contact, his shoulders shifting to give Soonyoung more space between their bodies.

It’s dry and should be a little uncomfortable, but Minghao seems to like it. He sucks at the junction of Soonyoung’s collarbones, swirls his tongue in the sensitive dips along his throat, scrapes teeth over his pulse point. Lights up all the right zones until Soonyoung feels neon.

Then Minghao returns to his mouth and kisses him open, licks inside. Soonyoung loses his rhythm. He chokes on a whine, his fingers go slack.

It doesn’t occur to him, for a few seconds, that the ball is in his court. His apartment. Soonyoung abruptly slams a hand on the dresser, scrambling for the top drawer and its contents. Minghao makes an amused hum in the back of his throat but doesn’t let Soonyoung break the kiss, both hands flat on the pillow beside his head.

Little square of foil. Little bottle with residual sticky substance at the top. Soonyoung closes his fist around the necessities and brings them to the sheets.

Minghao rears back. His mouth is very pink and shiny. Soonyoung wants to suck on those lips, rut against the creamy skin of his stomach. He’s so dazed, for a second, he doesn’t notice Minghao staring until he follows his gaze and—

“Oh, wrong bottle.” Soonyoung tosses the SPF 80 sunscreen back into the drawer and fishes around for the lube. “There we go.”

“Have you ever—“ Minghao quirks his head, then sighs. “No, I don’t wanna know.”

“Hey,” Soonyoung teases, voice shuddering on the vowels. “Focus. I thought you wanted to touch me.”

“I will. There’s no rush.”

Soonyoung presses the bottle into Minghao’s hands. A wordless permission.

And Minghao, oh, he’s so gentle. He moves everything to the side at first and kisses down Soonyoung’s stomach to hover above the thin hair trailing down his abdomen. The tickle of his breath makes Soonyoung fidget. He’s only half-hard but so into this. He wants Minghao to envelop him, loot him, steal what is offered.

“Do you want to know what I did in your body before you got here?” Minghao suddenly asks, one hand wrapped too tight over the top of Soonyoung’s thigh. His voice is significantly lower. It goes straight to Soonyoung’s cock.

“What?”

“I touched myself,” Minghao confesses. “I wanted to know what it was like, what felt different.”

Soonyoung’s soul leaves his body in a long exhale. His eyes close so he can better imagine it—Minghao in his body, jerking off flat on the bed, fingering himself—and is that why Soonyoung had felt a little stretched when they Switched back, a little sore? Even hours later.

A hot flush bleeds down his neck. How does he feel about this? He didn’t give Minghao permission. It’s an invasion of privacy at best but… fuck, the visual is _doing things_ for him. He isn’t angry. Does this mean he’s attracted to himself? Half of Soonyoung’s brain goes topsy-turvy with desire, he can’t decide.

He wants to know more.

Soonyoung screws his eyes shut tighter and takes a shallow breath. “Tell me.”

“Okay, but I want you to watch,” Minghao says, one hand reaching up to cradle Soonyoung’s cheek, light as a feather. “You have pretty eyes.”

“Oh,” Soonyoung says. He opens his eyes slowly, as if in a dream, and props himself on his elbows for a better view. He can’t take a deep enough breath—his heart is a jackhammer.

Minghao’s palm settles on Soonyoung’s stomach. “Your dick is bigger than mine, first of all.”

Soonyoung huffs an unstable laugh.

“You’re more sensitive here.” Minghao suddenly digs his thumbs into the meat of Soonyoung’s inner thighs, sharp and unexpected. His cock jerks. He can’t even feel embarrassed, he’s too busy holding himself back from arching off the sheets. A fluttery adrenaline tingles down his body.

Minghao wraps one gorgeous hand around the base of Soonyoung’s cock, stroking up with confidence. Fucking finally. Soonyoung works to keep himself upright and quiet. He presses his own knuckles against his mouth to smother a bitten-off whine.

“More responsive…” Minghao adjusts his grip, leans closer so his hot breath fans over the head of Soonyoung’s cock. He hits the exact perfect angle, his fingers held tightly together, and speeds up. “Like this.”

Soonyoung bucks into that warm hand. His mouth falls open behind his knuckles in a half-gasp. This is how he touches himself, but better. Minghao answers with enthusiasm, sliding his hand down to the base and licking a long, wet stripe upwards. No warning. Soonyoung moans, humiliating and drawn-out, when Minghao follows up by sucking the head of his cock into his mouth.

His thighs twitch like he’s in the throes of death. It takes an incredible amount of self-control to stay still, to not push his cock further into the warmth of Minghao’s inquisitive mouth. Despite this being their first experience together, Minghao swirls his tongue in figure eights over the slit, like he knows exactly what will coax noises from deep within Soonyoung’s chest.

There’s no fucking way he could’ve learned all this during the Switch. That clear, coherent thought is fleeting in Soonyoung’s head before Minghao’s mouth descends further, lips almost pressed against his knuckles.

Soonyoung can’t focus on anything else after that. Just the warm, wet sensations of his cock being sucked, the fluttering of Minghao’s mouth. Unintentionally he thrusts forward, deeper, and gets rewarded by a harsh exhale through Minghao’s nose.

Except Minghao pulls off. There’s a sheen of spit at the corners of his mouth already. “Be nice,” he chides.

Soonyoung nods so fast he hurts his neck. “Sorry.”

Minghao gives him a little smirk and takes him all the way to his throat in one smooth movement. A gasp is reeled from Soonyoung’s throat. His arms tremble so hard he has to fall backwards on the bed. Gently he readjusts and threads one hand through Minghao’s thick hair.

Minghao starts moving in earnest. He hollows his cheeks and lets his jaw fall lax. Soonyoung watches his eyelashes flutter as he quickens into a rhythm and thinks, oh fuck.

“Hold on,” he says, breathlessly, even as his hips grind forward in tiny, uncontrollable jerks. “Hold on, I’m close.”

Minghao looks pleased. He slows immediately but Soonyoung can see the shine in his eyes. Under that intense stare, he feels laid bare in a way he’s never felt before—like Minghao has seen him inside out and staked a claim.

Minghao pulls away and gives a few final tugs of his cock. “You don’t want to come yet?”

“I want to fuck,” Soonyoung blurts out. He opens his mouth to soften the request, but… he can’t. That’s what he wants. Shyly he shifts his thighs closed as Minghao releases him.

But Minghao laughs in a really nice way. “Great. Then I’m gonna fuck you.”

“Great,” Soonyoung parrots.

He sits up and gathers Minghao in his arms. Minghao comes willingly, his spine unfolding like a cat’s as he leans into Soonyoung’s space. They kiss tongue first, messy and obsessive. Soonyoung tastes himself, earthy, a little bitter, a little salty. He licks Minghao’s mouth clean with too much spit. The fervour is returned. He feels caught in a feedback loop of desire, like Minghao will reciprocate anything he throws at him, and that minor trip of power goes to his head.

Soonyoung guides Minghao down by the shoulders so he’s straddling his narrow waist. When he moves his mouth to the shell of Minghao’s ear, he traces the skin lightly with his tongue and bites at the vulnerable skin of his jaw. Soonyoung sucks.

Minghao makes a noise best described as a whimper. Even he seems surprised by it, tensing under Soonyoung’s palms, so Soonyoung returns to his mouth and kisses their way back into a heady urgency. He wants to get fucked so badly it makes his hands shake. He’s never wanted anything like this before.

Part of it must be that he feels safe with this body, that his brain recognizes Minghao as a resting place. Soonyoung is willing to hand himself over, ungarnished.

He reaches blindly for the lube and rubs his fingers together. Without leaning away from Minghao’s consuming mouth, Soonyoung massages his own rim and cautiously presses in.

Oh, Minghao _did_ finger himself in this body. He can tell.

Minghao breaks away. His eyes are half-lidded when they slide down his chest, lower. “What are you doing?” He’s out of breath.

Soonyoung blushes. “Getting ready, what does it look like.”

“I said I wanted to touch you.” Minghao runs both hands down Soonyoung’s sides, tugging him closer by the hips so their cocks brush together. “Please?”

“Okay,” Soonyoung says, voice trembling.

Their positions are reversed so quickly, Soonyoung gets dizzy. He props himself on a pillow, hands buried in the sheets, and Minghao slithers back between his thighs. A lock of his dark hair tickles Soonyoung’s knee when he leans over. Anticipation might make him beg if Minghao doesn’t make a move now.

But Minghao spares a necessary moment to coat his own fingers in lube. An awkward, wet sound fills the room when he closes the bottle and Soonyoung would laugh if he weren’t so turned on he could barely breathe.

“You’re way better at this than I am,” Minghao says. He strokes Soonyoung’s perineum and Soonyoung feels all his soft places shiver. “Less pain, more pleasure.”

Gently he pushes his middle finger in. The feeling is different than Soonyoung touching himself—sensations are far more overwhelming with a partner. One of his favorite parts of sex is this initial breach, his body’s resistance and surrender. A shuddery sigh escapes him as he shifts and settles. Minghao slides all the way to his first knuckle and pauses before pulling out.

Minghao’s lips part. He watches his finger dip in, out. Hypnotized. “See? That feels good, right?”

Soonyoung’s bottom lip is caught between his teeth, but he makes an approving noise. It doesn’t take long for discomfort to ease, pressure into rhythmic pleasure, and he relaxes. Minghao crooks his finger. Again another way. On his third try he brushes someplace electric inside Soonyoung that makes him gasp.

“There,” he says. “Right there, yeah—“

Chest heaving, Soonyoung looks down to see Minghao palming himself with his free hand, eyes intent on Soonyoung’s face. He wasn’t expecting to make eye contact and the intimacy makes him twitch. Suddenly he feels compelled to egg Minghao on, encourage him, draw a reaction from those flat, dark eyes as he plays Soonyoung like an instrument.

“Hey,” Soonyoung stretches his leg back, opening himself up further. A second finger immediately nudges in, breaking off whatever he was going to say into shards of words, tiny sensual noises, as his hand flexes tightly over the sheet. Both fingers brush the sweet spot inside him and Soonyoung focuses enough to add a punched out, _“Fuck,_ you’re good with your hands. Keep—keep going, please.”

Minghao breaks eye contact to look down at his work with a pleased smile. He gracefully snags the lube and suddenly the slide gets slicker, easier. Hotter. As he slips in a third finger, Soonyoung’s whole body jerks.

“Because I know what you like,” Minghao says, his voice low. “I spent forty-five minutes in your shower yesterday. Sorry about the water bill.”

Soonyoung’s semi-hysterical laugh melts into a moan. Minghao picks up the pace, fucking into him with three crooked fingers at the perfect angle. Pleasure tightens into ecstasy. Soonyoung tries to roll his hips down, match the rhythm, feeling desperate and frenzied and half out of his mind, but Minghao drops a heavy hand on his hip bone and keeps him in place.

He doesn’t look like he’d be this good in bed. He looks pretty and shy, and he’s neither of those things when he scissors two fingers apart and sucks down the head of Soonyoung’s cock at the same time.

“Oh, fuck.” Soonyoung squeezes his eyes shut. A shudder builds at the base of his spine like the fault line before a quake. “Minghao, I—”

The pleasure stutters away. Minghao stops touching him immediately, pulling back, breathless. His eyes are wide and dark when he pushes Soonyoung’s thighs up. Soonyoung makes a frustrated noise and bends himself into shape.

He wants, he wants, he wants...

Minghao sighs angelically through his nose and lines up their bodies parallel. Shadows in the empty room thicken, like their bodies were whisked somewhere far away and separate from reality. Soonyoung shivers. Tries to speak, but can’t think of what to say that isn’t _please_ or _hurry._

“You okay?” Minghao pauses with blue light haloing his hair. He works on a condom with one skillful hand. A thin sheen of sweat glitters on his forehead.

Soonyoung can only imagine the mess he looks like himself, probably ruddy and damp and unsexy, but finds that he doesn’t care. Minghao’s heart is racing—he can feel it in his wrist, watch it pound in his neck like a race against the clock.

Soonyoung nods emphatically. “I’m good, I’m ready, go ahead.”

Minghao watches his face when he presses in.

It’s horribly intimate. Soonyoung’s eyes flutter closed as he exhales deep around the pressure. A hand cups his face. Minghao murmurs, “Look at me, look at me.”

So he does.

Minghao’s pupils are endless. Hot, damp surprise prickles at the corners of Soonyoung’s eyes. Fuck, that’s embarrassing, it’s just been a while. He inhales sharply when Minghao’s hips settle against his. They don’t move for a moment, breathing together, Minghao watching him shudder and tremble. His face is an open door.

Soonyoung waits until he blinks himself to composure. He lifts Minghao’s palm from the mattress and slips his own underneath. Their fingers tangle and squeeze tight, as if grounding each other to the Earth.

Minghao folds himself delicately forward for a kiss. Softer, lingering, more comfort than passion. It’s endearing and out of place and so terribly Minghao, this person he’s come to know well, that Soonyoung has to pull away before he says something serious.

“Move,” he instructs.

A breathless smile flashes across Minghao’s face. He does move, pulling out and pressing in deeper, a long and slow thrust that Soonyoung feels along his whole body.

This, he realizes, is the dick he woke up wearing yesterday morning. Now it’s inside him, probing and wholly welcome. Soonyoung feels wild. He drags his nails down Minghao’s back to reel him in closer, a shark on a hook.

Minghao claims he hasn’t danced in years. But god, he hasn’t forgotten how to keep a rhythm.

Working up from tender and purposeful, his hips start snapping harder, faster, an angle that edges on painful. He’s flexible to the point of inspiring envy. Helplessly Soonyoung clenches, loses the last of his coherency. He throws his head back against the sheets, one hand gripping tightly to the back of Minghao’s neck like an anchor dragging him down.

“Oh,” Minghao makes a surprised, breathy sound when their foreheads meet. Soonyoung hadn’t meant to make this even more intimate, but—he reached out and Minghao was there and came willingly and he wants—

“Ah, faster,” Soonyoung pleads into the tremulous space between their mouths. “You feel so good. There, please…”

Minghao kisses him with tongue and feeling. Soonyoung’s heart pounds to hell and back. He bumps their noses together trying to kiss sloppier, get his tongue behind Minghao’s teeth, to inhabit the same space. He gets a hand around his own cock and tugs.

Like this, he won’t last long.

It might be Soonyoung’s imagination, but he thinks fluctuation does kick in. He’s in that head-tingly space pre-orgasm, attention fully focused on how he feels full and hot, when his perspective goes wobbly. His hips are rocking forward hard, but they’re also bearing down. He is both fucking and getting fucked.

Minghao must feel something too, because he makes a soft, guttural noise and falters off-pace.

“I’m inside you,” Minghao says in awe.

Minghao’s hand—Soonyoung’s hand—a hand spreads Soonyoung’s knees further apart and he feels like he’s splitting down the middle in the best way, a meaningless body aside from the blood rushing south, mouth open hot and panting, but also closed as his lips—Minghao’s lips—lips are bitten hard.

Gently Minghao slows and pulls out. Soonyoung can sense what he wants and follows willingly, rolling onto his stomach and nesting his face in his arms. He’s pudding in this man’s hands, trembling, both here and not here. Their bodies are a confusing mix of pleasures. Soonyoung feels himself sink into a yielding, soft heat as Minghao whines.

That sound plunges into him like a torch. Soonyoung’s hips twitch forward, grinding his weeping cock into the sheets, unsure if he’s fucking the bed or himself—his hands flex around nothing as Minghao grabs his waist forcefully—and god this should be overwhelming, and it is, but he can’t get enough.

He gathers together shreds of focus to push himself further into Minghao’s body. His desire is doubled. Teeth fit lightly onto the curve of his shoulder.

“I feel you, too,” Soonyoung gasps, aiming to tease but sounding too wrecked to pull it off. “Will you…”

He reaches back and lays his palm over Minghao’s fingers firm on his skin. Minghao’s hands are huge. Soonyoung can feel the silky pads of those fingers, can almost move that hand of his own volition…

Somehow Minghao gets the message. Fingers weave into Soonyoung’s crispy hair and apply gentle pressure to his skull. He sits straighter, adjusting his juggernaut grip on Soonyoung’s waist.

“Yes,” Soonyoung cries. “Fuck, please, yeah—“

“I’ve got you,” Minghao murmurs, voice shattering over the vowels.

Soonyoung arches his neck into the hold, seeking a better glimpse of Minghao pistoning into him like he’ll collapse if he doesn’t, like the only real thing in the world is the space where they are connected.

Minghao is flushed from his ears to his dark nipples. He’s so fucking beautiful. Soonyoung can feel the submission of his own body, the uncomfortable stretch of his neck and lower back as he bends to better accommodate what he’s taking, what he’s giving.

It drives Soonyoung over some invisible edge. “Minghao,” he says, and the name is shot from his mouth like an arrow. He babbles. “Minghao, Minghao, we’re close.” His breath catches on a high noise. “Ah, please—“

Minghao’s breath hitches. He presses his damp forehead into Sooonyoung’s neck. A noise builds in the back of his throat that coincides with the far-off tension conquering both of their bodies, their one singular body, a slow and incoming wave like rolling thunder over the hills. His hips slam into Soonyoung. Stutter. Minghao’s cock pulses, hot, as Soonyoung himself comes all over the sheets.

He thinks he slurs out Minghao’s name. For a moment, in his mouth, it feels like his own.

A moment passes before clarity returns. Soonyoung realizes he’s shaking, legs gelatinous, his sweat already semi-cool on his back. When Minghao pulls out he makes a helpless, uncomfortable noise. The connection between them ebbs like walking away from a router.

A tender hand runs down the length of his spine. Minghao’s lips meet the exposed skin of Soonyoung’s cheek, where he rests their faces together for a moment. They breathe, subconsciously, in tandem. Soonyoung’s shaking settles. There are no words for how he feels now, but he thinks he already misses the moment as it passes.

“That was real, right?” Soonyoung turns over his shoulder. “The fluctuation.”

Minghao shuffles onto the pillow to meet his gaze. No less intense than earlier. “Yeah. Wow.”

_Is that going to happen every time,_ Soonyoung wants to ask, but that would imply a next time and he doesn’t know if he’s getting one. Oh, there he goes. Already missing the moment as it passes.

Soonyoung lifts himself on shaky elbows. His stomach is drooling with mess, the sheets no better. He makes an exaggerated face of disgust and Minghao smiles.

“I need to clean up,” Soonyoung mumbles.

Minghao’s eyes spark. “Too bad you don’t own a towel.”

Groaning, Soonyoung flops back down into his own mess. Minghao devolves into giggles. His hand is still stroking over Soonyoung’s skin, lingering in the dip at the bottom of his spine, where a fern-shaped scar would rest on Minghao’s body.

The practice of fucking the Switch out of your bodies is actually pretty common.

It happens once in _Love Stories._ Soonyoung flips back to that chapter after Minghao leaves. In a dramatized retelling of the already dramatic Titanic movie, Jack and Rose miraculously Switch the night before the ship sinks and must resist a magnetic connection that threatens to upheave strict social hierarchy. Yadda yadda… he turns the pages faster. Here it is.

The line Soonyoung remembered is, _In the backseat of the automobile, the lovers rediscover themselves and each other in every way known to intimacy. Two minds, one body._

Followed, of course, by a deep-set note in the margin: _I wasn’t me until I was you._

Soonyoung closes the book and sits in reflective silence for several moments, trying to crystallize how the world moved under someone else’s feet. How fluctuation gave him proof that he’s not alone in the universe, that life isn’t some grand simulation.

Sharing bodies didn’t give him a window into Minghao’s thoughts—but Soonyoung felt him in a thousand other ways that proved his consciousness is just as deep and diamond-studded as Soonyoung’s. Maybe more so. Minghao felt like a warm summer breeze on the inside, like a candle in the windowsill. Soonyoung’s never been in love before. He wonders if two days are enough to learn.

An hour after they separate, Minghao sends Soonyoung a series of texts all in a row.

_Hi hyung._

_You asked me what it was like right after the typhoon but tbh, I don’t remember much. I wasn’t me. I was barely a person._

_At one point I thought meditation saved me but that wasn’t true. I saved myself. By getting through the days, first, and then by getting help when eventually I could._

_Please believe me when I say that you’re already doing better than I did. Call me anytime you want to talk, about anything. Yes even the metaphysical purpose of trees lol._

_I think there’s a reason we Switched together. I think it was always meant to be you and me. Us rebuilding the world. Does that sound crazy?_

_I’m visiting Busan this weekend. You should come._

They borrow Junhui’s car.

Busan is a six hour drive from Seoul. The weather is pleasant until halfway down the peninsula, when a dark parade of clouds ruptures the horizon. By late afternoon they’re engulfed, a speck on the long road, surrounded by dry prairie grass and the odd copse of trees. Farmland stretches on through a hundred shades of blue-green. Mediocre pop hums on the stereo.

Soonyoung presses his face to the window and tries to guess when the rain will start.

“And… now!” he says, for the third time in as many minutes.

Minghao spares a cursory glance upwards. He keeps both hands relaxed on the wheel. “Nope.”

Soonyoung waits with bated breath, just in case. He rolls down the window and sticks out his arm, feeling for the degree of precipitation, letting the breeze cut goosebumps into his bare skin. How cold will a typhoon be? He has no experience with this. Maybe he should’ve brought a better jacket than his knee-length puffer.

“Hey,” Minghao says suddenly. “I was talking to Junhui, and he said his job is having admin interviews starting next week. He works for some entertainment company, one of the big ones I can’t remember. They’re hiring in Sales.”

Soonyoung chews on his lower lip. “When?”

“Before noon. But I told him about your schedule and he’s trying to arrange a call ahead of time with one of the hiring managers.”

“Oh. Thank you, that’s so—you didn’t have to!”

Minghao glances away from the road. His eyes soften. “I wanted to.”

The stereo connection suddenly gutters out. Static bursts from the speakers before Minghao can whip the dial down. Soonyoung flips through a few stations, landing on alien noises and utter silence, before giving up.

“Damn,” he says emphatically.

“I hate driving in silence.” Minghao’s knuckles tighten on the wheel. A bird flutters across the road up ahead, a streak of snowy white against the asphalt. “It’s the only time I feel sleepy. Would you mind telling a story?”

Soonyoung reaches into the backseat for his bag. “I can read from this book if you want! It’s a bunch of different love stories.”

“Sure.”

“Any preference? Tragedy, rom com, coming of age?”

“Read me your favorite.” Minghao smiles.

Affection tightens around Soonyoung’s throat like a collar. He would lean over and plant an obnoxious kiss on Minghao’s face if they weren’t in a moving vehicle right now. As it is, he settles for flipping to a random page in _Love Stories_ and clearing his throat.

“Once upon a time,” Soonyoung says, voice syrupy. “There was a boy who lived on the east side of Seoul National and a boy who lived on the west side…”

Minghao’s head whips towards him. “Seriously?”

“Shhh.” Soonyoung flaps a hand at his face. “There were two boys. One was like a hurricane and one was like a wildfire. No, one was like a spider and one was like a bird. Wait, shit, no. I want to be a tiger. Scratch all that, we’re starting over.”

Minghao laughs so hard that his eyes become little crescent moons on his face, and at the same time the sun breaks through the unforgiving cloud cover for one holy moment, so that he’s spotlighted in the driver’s seat like something divine. Something precious.

Soonyoung reads through the first three chapters of _Love Stories._ He skips the notations, including the one he's scratched onto the back cover: _us against the world._ When they get close enough to the next city, the radio reanimates like Frankenstein’s monster himself.

It sparks halfway through a line — _when I watch the world burn, all I think about is you…_

Minghao flicks through the stations until reaching a soft piano track. His lips quirk into a faint, faraway smile.

“Okay, rain… Now!” Soonyoung bursts, reenergized, as they pass a field of grazing cows. Tails flick in utter nonchalance. The cows, if they notice the incoming storm, don’t care.

This time Minghao doesn’t look up. “No.”

“I have no future as a meteorologist.”

“None at all.” Minghao reaches over absently to pat at Soonyoung’s thigh. “Stick to your strengths.”

“Like?”

“You make a decent coffee,” he teases.

Soonyoung groans and melts into the leather upholstery. Fresh air has cleared out the lingering smell of gochujang from the car, but dust in dashboard crevices is starting to irritate his nose. Also, he hasn’t spoken that long uninterrupted in a while—his jaw aches.

Soonyoung pouts. “I entertain you for free on this trip and what do I get? Slander.”

On his thigh, Minghao’s hand flips palm-up. “I’m kidding. You’re good at lots of things.”

Soonyoung takes the bait and laces their fingers together. It means Minghao is driving one-handed, and that shouldn’t be sexy enough for Soonyoung to take notice, but it is. And he does.

He smacks a sloppy, loud kiss to the back of Minghao’s hand. “Tell me more!”

“Fine.” Minghao leans over to kiss him on the mouth, quick as a blink, gentle as a sunbeam. “If you promise to believe me.”

“I always do.”

Minghao looks resolutely ahead. “You’re crazy smart. The way you think—I’ve never had conversations like ours before. I felt it during the Switch. Like my thoughts were twice as fast.”

The compliment warms Soonyoung like a hearth igniting in his chest. He wasn’t fishing for anything, but Minghao is generous to a fault and knows his tells better than anyone. They’ve been texting nonstop since Minghao left his apartment after the Switch, have hung out twice after work and class. They’ve slipped into a staunchly supportive back-and-forth where Soonyoung clings to Minghao and jokes around and roughens him up with kisses, and Minghao smiles and endures it and sweet-talks him into goo.

It’s nice. It’s not something he could build with anyone else, because no on else holds onto Soonyoung’s words like a handful of diamonds. No one else looks at him and says, I get it. You’re allowed to be whatever you are.

Soonyoung rolls up the back windows, ensconcing them in a cozy bubble with only soft piano and engine hum for company. “If I were so smart,” he argues, “I’d be able to predict the rain… which starts… now!”

Thunder pops open the sky like a can. Soonyoung sticks his whole head out the window, getting drenched by the sudden downpour, shrieking his victory into the countryside. In the mirror, his hair is a shock of honeysuckle. Minghao laughs and laughs.

Years from now, when the waters rise and the sky dries up, Soonyoung will wrap himself around a Minghao drenched in moonlight and say, “Now, please.”

Minghao will kiss away his wishes. They’ll have each other, at least.

They drive to a shitty hotel near the water, bracketed by jagged rocks and removed from the tourists’ stomping grounds, where Minghao rushes check-in and stands at the cracked window with his raincoat bunched in both hands. Soonyoung feels his hair drying in downy tufts.

Here the sky is rioting. Sheets of rain slap criss-cross over the sidewalk. The wind started when they arrived at the hotel but already it feels like the hand of a god is shaking the foundation of the building. Breathe in, breathe out, rattle the wooden floorboards. Everything stinks of mud and salt.

Soonyoung bounces on the bed. Singular, he notices. “Why are we here?”

Minghao stays facing the window. His frame is dwarfed by the glass. He looks like he’s in the dark maw of something large, about to be swallowed.

“When Junhui Switched, I spent a few days with Joshua before his family could get together money for the plane ticket.” Minghao looks over one shoulder, his profile stark. “He liked having the TV on. He played this American show about people who chase storms for a living. They just get in their cars with a shitload of equipment and drive straight into the tornado, or tsunami, or whatever. They’ve been making big money recently.”

A shrieking gale blows over the roof and echoes into their room. Soonyoung rubs his fingers together, dusty from the stale duvet. “We don’t have any equipment.”

“I’m not here for that. I’m not stupid enough to risk our lives, they just gave me the idea. I wanted to see a typhoon one more time.”

_You’ll have plenty more opportunities, with the way the world is headed,_ Soonyoung thinks cynically. But he’s learning not to give power to that voice.

He stands and joins Minghao at the window just in time for the electricity to flicker off. They’re swathed in a humid gray. It takes a long moment until Soonyoung’s eyes adjust enough to shimmy Minghao into a one-sided backhug, his chin heavy on Minghao’s shoulder.

A groan travels through the wall. Soonyoung assumes it’s their neighbor bemoaning the darkness, but the noise gets higher, rhythmic. He presses a grin against the fabric of Minghao’s shirt when he realizes he’s listening to a hookup in the middle of a typhoon.

Minghao cranes his neck to catch Soonyoung’s eye and they break into identical hushed laughter.

“Someone’s having fun,” Soonyoung whispers gleefully.

The reminder, compounded with proximity of Minghao’s skin and smell, have Soonyoung twisting his hips, suddenly jittery with want. Thunder booms and fades. Rain is a shitty DJ against the window.

The benefits of being with someone who knows your body better than you do: Minghao twists around and kisses him first.

Soonyoung loses himself in it. The warmth, the slick slide of their mouths, the languid way Minghao backs himself against the window and tangles both hands in Soonyoung’s hair. It feels so good, with Minghao.

It feels good that he likes Soonyoung’s body, that he likes how Soonyoung uses too much spit and sweats up a river and can’t hold still. Even better, Soonyoung reciprocates—loves Minghao’s bony joints, loves his chapped lips and aggressive hands. They could waste hours this way. Before he can slot his thigh between Minghao’s knees and mold their bodies together like clay, Minghao pulls away.

“Let’s go outside,” Minghao says unexpectedly.

Soonyoung draws back and laughs. Stops. “Holy shit! You’re serious.”

“Just for a second. Before it gets worse.”

“For what?”

“To say _fuck you_ up close.” Minghao presses a final kiss to the corner of Soonyoung’s mouth and steals out of his arms.

That sneaky, flexible bastard.

Minghao leads him by hand into the foyer and through the trembling glass doors. The elderly woman behind the check-in desk doesn’t even look up, scribbling away in a leatherbound notebook. They’re bundled into raincoats and beanies, hoods pulled tight to chins, but Soonyoung still feels wind slice aggressively through the crevices in his clothes. It’s not unbearably cold—this is still a tropical storm—but makes him shiver nonetheless.

Water pummels into their shins. Even on the porch, cradled underneath a rickety wooden overhang, they can’t stay dry. Soonyoung clings to Minghao like a baby monkey.

The sound is like nothing he’s heard before: a constant rush interspersed with claps of thunder and the animalistic moaning of a furious wind. If he squints far down the cliffside, the waves are just visible exploding against the rocks like reverse fireworks, tendrils of darkness exploding upwards. Stumpy palm trees buck and bow in greeting. Their leaves are ripped into debris and scattered over the shifting mud.

It’s too loud to speak normally. Soonyoung wiggles his mouth close to the shell of Minghao’s ear and murmurs, “Are you afraid?”

Minghao’s face has collapsed, as wet and raw as the sky. His answer makes no sound but Soonyoung watches the shape pass over his lips.

“No,” he says. “It’s beautiful.”

**Author's Note:**

> Additional content warning description: Soonyoung and Minghao switch bodies. Off-screen, Minghao in Soonyoung’s body touches himself without Soonyoung’s knowledge. He tells Soonyoung about it later in a sexual context and Soonyoung is first confused, then interested. So it’s... dubcon masturbation? Where consent is not explicitly given but it's not clear whether it's needed. This a minor part of the fic and the actual explicit scene is fully consensual, but please don’t make yourself uncomfortable if this isn’t a dynamic you’d like to read!
> 
> If you got through this - thanks for reading!
> 
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/klavvrites) \+ [LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL ART BY DEE!!](https://twitter.com/baybiechocolat/status/1358903074455121923)


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